Xi Yan (Jennifer Lim), Daniel Cavanaugh (Gary Wilmes) and Cai Guoliang (Larry Lei Zhang) on stage. Photo Credit: Peter James Zielinski.

Communication is key to human advancement. We descend into the world of progress with language and hope for the best results. In “Chinglish”, written by Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang and directed by Leigh Silverman at the Longacre Theater, we are submerged into situations that call for progress while dealing with the roadblocks of language barriers. Set in modern-day China, Chinglish explores the difficulties that an American businessman, Daniel Cavanaugh (Gary Wilmes), has to face while trying to get a Chinese Minister, Cai Guoliang (Larry Zhang) to accept his business proposal to translate Chinese signs into proper English, work through his suspicions with his enthusiastic translator, British Peter Timms (Stephen Pucci) and potentially have an unconventional fling with Vice Minister Xu Yan (Jennifer Lin). The incredible comedy mesmerizes with its charming characters and pleasant break from stereotypes. The English subtitles alone can have you rolling out of your seat from incessant amounts of laughter. It extends its humor with light-hearted references to pop culture and current affairs, such as the mentioning of the doomed Enron Empire with regards to David’s work history.

The comic timing and apparent mastery of puns are weaved so beautifully into the play that one can wonder how Silverman managed to convey Hwang’s marvelous script onto the stage so well. The advanced sets and intricate framework for each scene saves the audience from pretending what they’re seeing is set in China; it already feels like it. It is a first for me, seeing subtitles being incorporated into a Broadway play. The result? A clever and witty addition to the already clever and witty show. But with the presence of these subtitles, it is hard to keep focus on what the actors are doing and understand what they are saying all at the same time. This setback occurs with every subtitle that appears, but it is a small price to pay for the dynamic structure that the play is presented in. “Chinglish” is packed with laughs, jokes, anti-clichés, and a hilarious twist to “forbidden love”. It would suffice to say that I left the theatre wishing that I could speak Mandarin Chinese.