Running at Goodman Theatre through October 12, “The World of Extreme Happiness” is a thought-provoking production.
Based on a play by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, “Happiness” explores China’s cultural and economic transformation from a rural-based society to a rapidly urbanized country. Goodman’s lively, funny and ever poignant production is directed by Eric Ting and captivates its audience with utterly crude humor, painfully sympathetic characters and a vivid setting that evokes a world so far-removed from downtown Chicago, it’s hard to imagine it even exists.
The story centers on Sunny, a teenage girl born in 1992 to a desperate family in a dilapidated house on the Yangtze River. Her parents, who greatly desire a boy, leave her to die in a slop bucket and end up saving her after discovering that she survives, the father astonished to find that she is smiling “like Buddha.” As a young girl, Sunny migrates to Shenzen, a major city in China, where she works as a janitor at a factory 12 hours each day to pay for her younger brother’s (Pete) education. Constantly being denied a raise by her superior and struggling to improve her earnings as both a woman and migrant, Sunny meets another young girl, Ming-Ming, who introduces her to self-help classes, which she begins to attend nightly in the hopes of improving her position in society and changing her destiny. As Sunny gains confidence in herself and grapples with China’s corrupt two-tiered economic system, which grants certain privileges to city dwellers that are denied to migrant workers, she begins to question the existing system and her own superficial, monetary goals.
Set Designer Mimi Lien creates simple but vivid settings that are more than just accurate visual representations of a rural versus urban China, or wealth versus poverty. The play’s numerous settings evoke deeper feelings that are related to the situations of its characters. Sunny’s birth home demonstrates the simplicity of her family’s lifestyle as well as the ignorance and poverty that surrounds them. Lien uses a metallic-like wall and a largely empty stage, apart from a janitor’s cart equipped with cleaning supplies, to represent the factory where Sunny works and to create a sense of loneliness, despair and restricted freedom. Through Lien’s depiction, the factory becomes an urban, iron-like cage.
The production’s numerous characters, played by the same six actors and actresses, are unique in their personalities and often entertaining. They do not shy away from crude or rough language, which in my opinion was too much at certain times, but are incredibly expressive and make full use of the stage. This is particularly the case with Francis Jue, who plays Mr. Destiny, the instructor of Sunny’s self-help class and a loud, flashy and wildly expressive game show host. From his stellar white outfit and microphone-amplified voice to his grand gestures and constant movement across the stage, Jue engages the audience and speaks to them just as directly as he speaks to Sunny, who at one point stands with Ming-Ming in one of the balcony aisles amidst the audience.
Named “Most Exciting Broadway Newcomer in 2011” by New York Magazine, Jennifer Lim (Sunny) is incredibly talented and presents a naive, optimistic and energetic young girl looking to improve her circumstances and make something of herself. Lim does an excellent job of showing the changes in Sunny, who grows from a timid daughter and employee to a more confident, hopeful and aggressive youth. Lim’s shining moment, however, is at the end of the play after she has been incarcerated by the Chinese government for standing up for the rights of migrant workers. Tied by the wrists to a bed and locked away in a prison room for months, drugged and tortured, Lim’s Sunny is a shell of a person, incoherent and damaged beyond repair. The final scene is the most powerful of the entire play and so disturbing that I had to look away.
Jodi Long, as Artemis and Wang Hua, is also a wonderful actress and plays her characters with strong convictions, from Sunny’s poor, tired and disappointed mother, swearing and howling at the top of her lungs during Sunny’s birth, to the wealthy co-owner of a gigantic corporation who made something of herself out of nothing and intends to remain as wealthy and powerful as she can, no matter the moral costs. Jo Mei, as Ming-Ming, Qing Shu Min and Xiao Li, is able to play characters that are almost caricatures of certain types of people, like the optimistic, naïve and colorful (literally) Ming-Ming, to more serious roles like one of the Chinese government’s lead investigators. Donald Li, who plays Sunny’s desperate and simple-minded father Li Han and Artemis’ husband James Lin, is another fabulous actor. I particularly enjoyed his performance as Sunny’s father, who he depicts as an ignorant man traumatized from the past and more loving to his prized racing birds than either of his children. Finally, Ruy Iskandar (Sunny’s brother Pete and the wild Ran Feng) excellently depicts two very different characters. Iskandar stands out more as Sunny’s care free brother, who gives a dramatic performance at the end.
Costume Designer Jenny Mannis also deserves high praise for her wonderful costumes, from Sunny’s simple janitor outfit to Artemis’ fashionable white pantsuit and black heels. Mannis also beautifully demonstrates Sunny’s transformation from a simple country girl to a more adventurous city girl through her partly dyed hair, make-up, eyelash extensions and high heels. Mannis’ costumes also depict the dire situation of Sunny and her family’s rural home, with Sunny’s father wearing a soiled white tank top and shorts and her mother in nothing but a worn night gown that becomes stained with blood after Sunny’s birth.
Finally, I want to emphasize the play’s unique use of video recording to magnify characters and their circumstances. Several times throughout the performance, specifically when Sunny’s father is being recorded by the Chinese government and forced to speak ill of his daughter, Ting had his actors and actresses use video cameras that projected the characters off the of the stage’s back wall, making them appear larger and almost more real, like watching a documentary. The use of this filming throughout the performance made it all the more poignant and frightening and is to be highly commended.
Eric Ting’s wonderful production of “The World of Extreme Happiness” hits the audience hard with the troubled realities of late twentieth and early twenty-first century China. Many themes are explored, from the differences in ideologies between the younger and older generations in China to discrepancies between the rich and the poor, men and women. Ting’s production deeply engages the audience, sometimes bringing viewers into the play itself, and raises awareness to far-away issues that have a lasting impact.
“The World of Extreme Happiness” runs through October 12 at Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St., Chicago. For more information, visit Goodman’s website.
Photo by Liz Lauren.
