Chinese Republicans (Roundabout Theatre Company)

By Harry Forbes

Playwright Alex Lin’s satirical comedy takes aim at misogyny and racism in the corporate workplace—familiar targets, perhaps, but Lin’s characters give the material a distinctive twist. While some of the plot’s turns feel scattershot, the play builds to a conclusion that lands with genuine force.

Set in 2019, the story centers on four Chinese women who meet monthly for an affinity-group lunch at a Chinese restaurant. All work at the investment bank Friedman Wallace, and their gatherings function as a kind of support group where they compare notes on navigating a predominantly white, male corporate culture. Yet solidarity only goes so far: each woman is also keenly aware of her own ambitions and the compromises that advancement may require.

Ellen, played with steely composure by Jennifer Ikeda, is a managing director who has achieved considerable success but still finds herself stalled short of partnership. Her protégé, Katie—portrayed by Anna Zavelson, memorable to many from Light in the Piazza at Encores—is a 24-year-old wealth strategies research associate whose trajectory takes an unexpected turn when she abruptly pivots toward activism. Jodi Long brings authority to Phyllis, now 65, once Ellen’s mentor and the first Asian woman to become a managing director in New York, currently working as a consultant. Completing the quartet is Iris, played by Jully Lee, a lower-level employee in the firm’s software division—an immigrant still awaiting a green card.

All four performers acquit themselves well, capturing both the camaraderie and the underlying tensions within the group. There is also amusing support from Ben Langhorst as a knowingly campy waiter who briefly punctuates the action.

Lin structures the play with occasional flashbacks and dream sequences, devices that sometimes add texture. Despite the title, the “Republican” aspect of the play is not emphasized as heavily as one might expect; the drama’s focus remains more squarely on questions of identity, advancement, and belonging within elite corporate spaces.

Visually, the production is solid if not showy. Wilson Chin’s revolving set proves practical, with the red-hued restaurant environment emerging as the most striking element. Hana Kim supplies projections that help mark shifts in time and perspective. Under Chay Yew’s brisk direction, the evening rarely drags, even when some of Lin’s plot developments stretch credibility.

If “Chinese Republicans” doesn’t always fully cohere, its sharp observations about ambition, loyalty, and the costs of corporate success keep it engaging—and its final moments suggest a more resonant play just beneath the surface.

(Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 West 46th Street; RoundaboutTheatre.org; through April 5)

Photo by Joan Marcus: (l.-r.) Jodi Long (Phyllis/Young Phyllis), Jennifer Ikeda (Ellen/Ailin), Anna Zavelson (Katie) and Jully Lee (Iris)

The Dinosaurs (Playwrights Horizons)

By Harry Forbes

Playwright Jacob Perkins’ compact 75-minute drama takes a familiar theatrical premise—a support group—and quietly reshapes it into something more observational than overtly dramatic. Structured as a series of meetings in a women’s sobriety circle and told in a non-linear sequence, the play unfolds less as a conventional narrative than as an accumulation of moments. In a program note, Perkins acknowledges his own history with sobriety, a disclosure that seems to inform the work’s careful, empathetic tone.

The setting is spare: a mostly bare stage, folding chairs arranged for the meeting, and a table set aside for the group’s modest refreshments. The play begins almost tentatively, as Rayne (Keilly McQuail), a prospective newcomer, hovers at the threshold while Jane (April Mathis) prepares the room. Their brief exchange about donuts and cupcakes establishes the play’s naturalistic rhythms—casual, lightly humorous, and attentive to the small talk that often fills the edges of more serious conversations.

Rayne soon retreats, apparently losing her nerve, leaving the regulars to gather: Joan (Elizabeth Marvel); Jolly (Kathleen Chalfont), an elderly sponsorship coordinator; Janet (Mallory Portnoy); and Joane (Maria Elena Ramirez). Nearly everyone bears a name beginning with “J”—a detail that initially feels like a wry joke but also subtly blurs distinctions among the characters, an effect the play itself occasionally acknowledges.

The meetings yield glimpses of the women’s inner lives rather than full confessions. Janet describes a dream in which a driver urges her to shed excess baggage—literal and emotional—including, improbably, a man tucked into her duffel bag. Joane discusses difficulties with her son, while Joan voices lingering doubts about her progress. Yet some stories remain conspicuously untold. Jane, who seems the picture of composure as she organizes the room, is revealed in solitary moments to be carrying burdens she has not shared with the group.

If the play withholds the kind of dramatic escalation audiences might expect from this premise—recent ensemble dramas like Liberation build more overtly toward confrontation—that restraint appears to be the point. Perkins is less interested in climaxes than in the subtle ways people circle their truths. His writing observes these women with notable compassion, and the performances are so unforced that the scenes often feel overheard rather than staged.

The production, directed with understated assurance by Les Waters, leans fully into that quiet realism. Humor surfaces naturally, often in passing remarks that momentarily lighten the room before the conversation settles again into something more reflective.

The design supports the play’s unadorned approach. The scenic elements evoke the plain functionality of a meeting space, while Yuki Link’s flat fluorescent lighting captures the slightly institutional atmosphere familiar to anyone who has spent time in such rooms. The work was commissioned and developed by Clubbed Thumb, whose mission to produce “funny, strange and provocative new plays by living American writers” finds a thoughtful, if deliberately modest, example here.

(Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42 Street; tickets@phnyc.org or 212 279 4200; through March 8)

Photo by Julieta Cervantes: (l.-r.) April Matthis, Kathleen Chalfant, and Elizabeth Marvel