Theatre in Review: The World of Extreme Happiness (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)

	Francis Jue, Jennifer Lim. Photo: Matthew Murphy

Few plays this season begin in such blunt, slam-bang fashion as The World of Extreme Happiness. The lights come up on a tiny farmhouse in rural China where a woman is giving birth; she stands, clutching a window sill, crying out in agony. Downstage, her husband recounts a dream he had, of a pigeon defecating on his face, which he probes for symbolic meaning; he is oblivious to his wife's suffering, even as she curses a blue streak. The attending midwife produces the baby -- it is a girl and therefore is wrapped in newspaper and promptly thrown into the garbage can. Both husband and wife heap abuse on the midwife, who promised them a son; she unhappily gives them a refund. This is the fifth female child they have relegated to the trash. A few minutes later, the father lifts the lid of the can and realizes the baby is still breathing, taking it as a sign from God that she is meant to live.

Well, it's an attention-getter. The action of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's play then jumps ahead 18 years or so to an even less hopeful reality; the baby, ironically named Sunny, is grown and cleaning toilets in a Shenzhen factory owned by manufacturer named Jade River (read: FoxConn). Sonny hates the work, but supports her father -- her mother is dead -- and her younger brother, Pete, whom she is putting through school. Still, she refuses to believe that this is where it ends. A coworker introduces her to Mr. Destiny, a local help guru who peddles a pernicious, transparently false philosophy of positive thinking ("I am the most important person in the world," his followers chant) that electrifies the crowds at what amount to secular revival meetings. Mr. Destiny offers training in such techniques as the "personal power position," which are supposed to make one an irresistible success. And, enthuses Sunny's friend, "When you complete the course, you get a framed diploma from any university you want!"

At first, Sunny struggles to break out of her dead-end job, but then she intersects with James Lin, a top executive with Jade River, who is worried about a potential scandal caused by the rising number of staff suicides. James' childhood friend and business colleague, Artemis Chang, vice-president of PriceSmart, the Wal-Mart substitute for which Jade River is the chief supplier, suggests a propaganda offensive: Jade River will produce a documentary depicting the happy lives of its workers and premiere it to the international media at the Great Hall of the People, home of the People's National Congress. And, as a kicker, the film will be introduced by a real-life example of Jade River's contented staff -- someone like, say, Sunny.

The rest of The World of Extreme Happiness depicts how Sunny lands the spokesperson job and how, in the weeks leading up to the premiere, her life unravels, causing her to make a momentous decision in front of a global audience. In its early scenes, Cowhig cannily dramatizes how the conflicting influence of traditional Chinese morality, the unbending Communist power structure, and the disruptive tactics of capitalism pull Sunny in different directions. There are several strong passages: Mr. Destiny's pep rally is a small masterpiece of flimflammery ("It is up to us to rewrite our stories," he says to the cheering crowd) and Sunny's supervisor at work harrowingly details the struggle to survive under Mao, when not even cannibalism was off the table if it got you through another day. "Compared to the past, this is paradise," he insists. It's probably no accident that both these characters are played by the ever-reliable Francis Jue, a true shapeshifter himself.

But The World of Extreme Happiness is overplotted and underwritten. A number of plot lines -- a government investigation into Artemis' past, some murky secrets about Sunny's family, and Sunny's bizarre "ghost marriage" to a young man from her village who is killed while working on a slipshod construction job -- are brought up and left hanging. More damagingly, Cowhig doesn't really lay the foundation for Sunny's disillusionment. When she takes action at the press conference, it doesn't feel fully earned.

That Sunny remains an engaging character is largely due to the excellent acting of Jennifer Lim, who earned so much attention for her work in David Henry Hwang's Chinglish. She fully captures Sunny's disgust with village life and her ruthless determination to get ahead. Yet when she stands in front of an audience mouthing lies and clichés about her perfect life, you can see an awareness of the truth dawning on her face and the inner struggle that follows. Lim is a remarkable actress and we can only hope it won't be four years before we see her again. The role of Pete is poorly drawn -- he spends half the play trying to get to the city, yet he practically hates it on sight, turning into a social dropout -- but Telly Leung's work goes a long way toward making a coherent character out of him. James Saito is equally convincing as Sunny's selfish, superstitious father and the sleek, money-grubbing James; Sue Jin Song is an equally chic partner in crime as Artemis. Jo Mei is amusing and touching as the most credulous of Mr. Destiny's followers. The director, Eric Ting, is stronger at handling the actors than coping with the choppy construction of Cowhig's script.

The action unfolds on Mimi Lien's set depicting the interior of a factory building; it makes a strong visual statement, thanks to the upstage door, and works for most of the play's locations, although it is a little stretched when asked to represent a luxury apartment. Tyler Micoleau's lighting contrasts natural sunlight in the village scene with a clammy fluorescent look for the factory and a disco's worth of colorful cues for Mr. Destiny's big scene. Jenny Mannis' costumes starkly contrast the characters' different social strata; her most wicked touch is the pastel silk workers' uniform designed for Sunny's appearance at the premiere. Mikhail Fiksel's sound design blends a variety of effects, including the ambient noise of the factory, pigeon coos, cheering crowds, and the frantic clicks of cameras at a press conference.

The World of Extreme Happiness is surely the most witheringly ironic title of the year; most of the characters find little or no satisfaction. But a play that might have had the force of a blunt instrument proves to be only intermittently powerful. Cowhig is a talented playwright with an admirable ambition, but at the moment her reach exceeds her grasp. -- David Barbour