Shanghai Dolls
Kiln, Kilburn

THERE should be so much to recommend in this new two-hander which premieres at the Kiln.

For a start the context is rarely explored in this country and introduces ideas that are both weighty and engrossing. Secondly, the production quality is both confident and slick. And lastly, the two female performers are a joy to watch.

Amy Ng’s play, however, is overloaded and often impenetrable for this audience.   

The story is of two women living in China who meet and make friends in 1935. One (Lan Ping) is a passionate, aspiring actress while the other (Li Lin, daughter of an assassinated communist rebel) appears to be down on her luck.

The setting is a rehearsal room in the headquarters of the League of Left-Wing Dramatists where Lan Ping is preparing for an audition. The two women very awkwardly make friends, then proceed through various stages of their lives, culminating in 1991.

When the two first meet, they personify what turn out to be the two conflicting devotions of the play: artistic freedom versus obedience to The Party.

“The Party” of course refers to the Chinese Communist Party while “artistic freedom” is exemplified here through the works of Ibsen and Chekhov. In particular, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is Lan Pang’s joy, its main character, Nora, being her go-to role.

The problem is the audience must boast more than a passing knowledge of both A Doll’s House and of the life and times of China under the leadership of Mao Zedong to keep up. And this can’t be guaranteed.

When Li Lin first talks of her loyalty to The Party, the concept is sprung upon us as empty words. With no background or conceptualisation offered, single-minded party loyalty of this intensity is inevitably strange to a British audience steeped in liberal individualism. Consequently, the play panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China, presenting the country’s political construct as an unqualified totalitarian and oppressive regime.

Also, the action on stage has the disadvantage of being upstaged by the much more thrilling drama taking place offstage. Consequently, as the women exchange party loyalty for personal expression and vice versa, their relationship becomes less absorbing than the activities of the dominant men they talk endlessly about, but who never come alive for us.

And by the time the two protagonists change their names and Lan Ping becomes Jiang Qing, third wife of Chairman Mao, they have all but lost their audience and squandered the chance to bring this particular revolutionary history to life.

Actors Gabi Wong (Lan Ping/Jiang Qing and Millicent Wong (Li Lin/Sun Weishi) perform with immense panache; Katie Posner (artistic director of Paines Plough who co-produce) directs in a manner worthy of greatness; and the projected news items of the time heighten the sense of a world on the move.  But the insistence of this play on prioritising a not-very-interesting relationship over the major drama taking place in parallel, is unforgiveable.

Insights into Chinese culture and politics are hugely welcome and necessary. But this is an opportunity missed.

Until May 10 2025. Box office 020 7328 1000, https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/