A largely forgotten figure in Asian-American history is resurrected to indelible life by a stunning Michelle Krusiec in Chance Theater’s gorgeously staged regional premiere of Lloyd Suh’s critically-acclaimed off-Broadway hit The Chinese Lady.

 Krusiec plays fourteen-year-old Guangzhou native Afong Moy, who having being sold into servitude by her financially strapped parents, became in the year 1834 the first female Chinese immigrant to the United States.

Dubbed “The Chinese Lady” by a pair of American brothers who saw her as an exotic cash cow, Afong soon found herself on exhibit to Americans eager to fork over 25 cents (about $9 in today’s currency) to see Afong demonstrate such hitherto unheard-of customs as using chopsticks (“elegant and poetic”) rather than a fork (“violent and easy”), preparing tea the Chinese way, and walking on feet bound by tradition to a fraction of their normal size, a practice her audiences found both fascinating and barbaric.

And since Afong could not do any of this without the aid of an interpreter, her employers hired bilingual male immigrant Atung (Albert Park) to translate Afong’s native Cantonese into English, though as far as The Chinese Lady is concerned, Atong is “irrelevant,” and she treats him accordingly, at least in the early years.

Suh’s play follows Afong as she ages from fourteen to sixteen to seventeen to twenty-nine to forty-four to sixty-two and beyond, as thousands of (male, always male) Chinese immigrants arrived on the West Coast, first in a futile search for gold, then as virtual slave labor in the construction of America’s transatlantic railway.

Along the way, Afong’s attitudes towards the United States evolve from wide-eyed curiosity to eager if not particularly successful assimilation to disillusionment at the atrocities perpetrated on Chinese immigrants by white Americans and an act of Congress that banned any future immigration from China.

As Afong undergoes these changes, so do we in the audience find our own reactions to her shifting from amusement at how clueless 1830s Americans were to cultures unlike their own, to disgust at what our ancestors did, to dismay at how little has changed, no matter how evolved we may kid ourselves into believing we are.

It’s a message that in hands less adept than playwright Suh’s might have come across heavy-handed and didactic.

Instead, The Chinese Lady draws us in with such sweetness and charm in its early scenes, in Afong’s naivete (she doesn’t know the difference between a President and an Emperor, she can’t fathom why Americans keep their shoes on and sleep three feet above the floor) and in the amusing banter between her and Atung, that when Afong’s eyes get opened to the ugly realities of the world around her, so do we.

It’s powerful stuff as Suh has written it and even more so as directed with imagination and nuance at the Chance by Shinshin Yuder Tsai and performed to superb perfection by its two magnetic stars.

Krusiec has us rooting for Afong from the moment she announces with pride that she is “on display here for your education and entertainment,” the gifted stage vet delivering a performance that grows even more powerful as cynicism takes the place of innocence and The Chinese Lady realizes she has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Park’s role may be the smaller one, but he is no less delightful in early scenes or heartbreaking when it becomes clear that Afung is as unwelcome as a male Chinese immigrant as he is irrelevant to his sole companion in life and work.

Scenic designer Christopher Scott Murillo has outdone himself in creating a vibrantly colorful set jam-packed with what 19th-century Americans would have imagined would be “typically Chinese” paraphernalia and Bebe Herrera’s equally apt props.

Grace Kim’s costume choices are equally spot-on in their deliberately inauthentic imitation of actual Chinese garb, Masako Tobaro’s lighting is subtly effective, and sound designer Jesse Mandapat underscores the play with appropriately Asian (or Asianesque) music.

Tsai doubles as casting director. Amanda Kang and Kaixiang Zhang are understudies.

Nico Pang and Jerry “Yi Hang” Zou are assistant directors. James Markoski is sound engineer. Carter Vickers is assistant scenic designer. Herrera is stage manager. Natalia Duong is dramaturg.

 As eye-opening as it is thought-provoking as it is emotionally affecting, The Chinese Lady is guaranteed to hold L.A. and OC audiences in its mesmerizing spell.

Chance Theater, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills. Through June 8. Fridays at 8:00, Saturdays at 3:00 and 8:00, and Sundays at 3:00. Also Thursday June 5 at 8:00. (Understudies Kang and Zhang perform on Saturday June 7 at 8:00.)
www.chancetheater.com

–Steven Stanley
May 24, 2025
Photos: Doug Catiller

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Tags: Chance Theater, Lloyd Suh, Orange County Theater Review