Theatre

Writer Eileen Zhang examines an Electra complex reaching dangerous maturity in a pre-war Shanghai destined for communism. Lin’s adoration of her father finally erupts in the wake of her twentieth birthday, when her mercilessly excluded mother tries to arouse an interest in boys, her fellow students, even communist demonstrations in her daughter, anything to divert her from her sexual flirtation with incestuous disaster. When Fengyi begins an affair with a girl of Lin’s age, all are painfully aware that he’s attempting to channel his own illicit desires into a slightly more acceptable infidelity.

Lin’s refusal to accept the reality of her adulthood is mirrored by her banker father’s blind insistence on the capitalist future of 1930s China, and Zhang plants ample and horribly credible psychological germs for the diseased family portrait she paints. But playwright Simon Wu’s adaptation falls short of unearthing its dynamism. Only Tina Chiang as the beleaguered Chinese wife brings the difficult admixture of complicity and disbelief convincingly to the stage. And director Shan Ng signally fails either to shift time forwards or illustrate key spikes in the tension. Zhang’s disturbing story remains a truly wondrous discovery, but this stage adaptation falls disappointingly flat, failing to hit any truly dramatic nerves.