Jennifer Lim and Gary Wilmes

Photo by Michael McCabe

The program says the play takes place in an American assembly room and the city of Guiyang, China. Fine. What assembly room? Oh! We are already assembled in the assembly room! David Cavanaugh (Tall, rangy, fortyish Gary Wilmes) stands in front of the assembly room curtain and points to various Chinese ideograms projected on a large screen, then explains what they really say and what they really intend to say instead of, or because of, the hilarious misunderstandings translation from the Chinese mostly results in, and, of course, from English to Chinese, just as bad. Aha, we are on an illustrated lecture with a newly wised up expert. After three years in the effort of trying to do business in China, David is now a Sinophile and Chinese speaker and cannot wait to tell us how he got to where he is.

That history is, of course now ongoing and David’s experience is but one of the thousands being enacted right now, every day in China. Well, maybe not everyone’s story is like David’s. Not everyone meets Xi Yan.

Playwright David Henry Hwang, as much as he likes his eponymous lead character, is unsparing in his slashingly funny insights into the barriers language alone creates along with interactive misunderstandings of folkways and mores, of social and business behaviors, standards of two wildly different societies crudely wed by their common grasp of the dance of doing business as what really matters above all. Making money, getting ahead. David is in the throes of promoting his family’s business of building signs for various enterprises requiring accurate translation, something near and dear to him. He’s lying, of course. And, of course, the Chinese don’t believe him, all smiles; all their mutual pretenses pile up for the puncturing, which puncturing, when it comes is half bitter as well as half funny, and not before emotions become involved.

David, in need of a Chinese speaking consultant, somehow finds Peter (Stephen Pucci) English, agreeable to the point of oily, but a speaker of impeccable Mandarin who will help him through the intricacies of translation as well as the intricacies of meeting the right people and he just happens to know the right person for a percentage of the business. Done. The meeting with the minister in charge of granting the contract for building translation signs for the cultural center of the city of Guyiang, exuberantly quirky minister Cai Guoliang (Larry Lei Zhang), backstopped by his vice-minister, the icily enchanting Xi Yan (Jennifer Lim), his magnificently inept translater, Miss Quian (Angela Lin) and smoothie Peter and babe in the woods David, is a side show of bumblings and misrepresentations, laugh upon laugh as we read the projections above their heads. Set designer David Korins manages to find convenient areas for translations in every one of his many free wheeling sets. This is, after all, the backbone of the show.

While David flounders as he discovers everything is not the way it appears, vice minister Xi Yan develops her prevailing agenda which converts inevitable failure into double dealing success for him and for her. She sees no double dealing, only satisfaction of her ambitions, erotic as well as financial, even if she doubles the double dealing. David is the most grateful, the most amiable, and, happily, the most innocent lover In Guiyang, China. And the most able. But while David falls in love, Xi Yan keeps her head and her marriage and her agenda. The machinations are edifying.

Playwright Hwang’s scathing, clear eyed, baring of the coolly amoral Chinese tactics versus the stumblingly naïve immoral American attempts is as much a lecture as a play, full of head shaking observations outside the wry humor and belly laughs, but ultimately a lecture more than a play as we end up in the assembly room, which rigmarole of events director Leigh Silverman keeps buoyant, choreographing even the dancing set changes into the action of the show, definitely bent on keeping things moving to avoid the impression that this might be a one joke idea. Were playwright Hwang inclined to prod deeper, his play would be a polemic; instead, it charms. How’s that for bitter?

Gary Wilmes as David is simply indispensable, perfect in presenting this tale of business success and its costs in these circumstances. Jennifer Lim, Angela Lin, Larry Lei Zhang and the rest of the company are admirable. Anita Yavich’s costuming is superlatively in character, Brian McDevitt’s lighting, the projection by Jeff Sugg and Shawn Duan, the sound support by Darron West all admirable. The contributions of cultural advisors Joanna Lee and Ken Smith clearly left their mark and Candace Chong’s Mandarin translations are elevating. Putting it all together director Silverman makes an American meal out of some of the best cuisines in the world but it’s still a lecture. Well now, lectures can be fun and they’re good for you, especially with a dose of sex, profanity and moral judgment. Enjoy.

Longacre Theater, 220 West 48^th Street. Tickets:$31.50-$126.50. 212-239-6200. Tue-Thu 7 pm, Fri, Sat 8 pm. Mats Wed, Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.