This Play’s Two Translators Might Give a Clue as to Its Challenges

The impact of political and corporate corruption on the struggle for human rights would seem a hefty subject for any playwright, but Anchuli Felicia King, author of “Golden Shield,” also harbors an even larger concern: the challenges posed by communication in general. Inspired by legal cases in which American tech conglomerates were accused of collusion with the Chinese government, “Shield” introduces a fictional multinational behemoth cleverly named ONYS, pronounced “onus,” as in responsibility, or culpability. As the play opens, we learn that a group of Chinese dissidents — among them, we’ll discover, a professor confined to a wheelchair after years of imprisonment and torture — are poised to sue ONYS for its role in enabling Beijing to track activists online.Their cause is taken up by the character Julie Chen, a young attorney whose ambitions seem most directed toward those less fortunate than herself. Over the course of briskly entertaining two acts, though, Ms. King shows how Julie’s personal baggage — acquired in the usual fashion, as a result of both disposition and circumstance — make her a flawed social justice warrior.This is accomplished with the assistance of two translators: Julie’s troubled younger sister, Eva, whom she enlists for her fluency in Mandarin; and a character simply called The Translator, whose purpose initially seems to be accommodating audience members who don’t speak that language, which is sprinkled throughout the script. The Translator promises to deliver “context where you need it,” but warns us that differences between Mandarin and English can make things tricky.Some of The Translator’s most adroit and engaging work will involve either taking strategic license — such as while guiding a negotiation between an arrogant ONYS executive and a Chinese government official — or deciphering what is not said, or what is said without full candor, in English. His job is “not really to translate,” he eventually admits, “but to interpret.”So when Eva tells her sister she’s applying to a program at a prestigious college, for example, and Julie says, “I admire your optimism,” The Translator clarifies the latter’s thoughts: “Roughly, ‘You spent three years at Berkeley getting wasted, there’s no way you’re getting into Georgetown.’” The tensions between Julie and Eva stem from both differences in personality — Julie is as unyielding professionally as she appears to be socially, refusing to consider legal settlements — and childhood trauma. While hardly insubstantial, the harsh memories that both unite and divide the sisters are the least interesting aspect of the play; when Ms. King’s focus is most narrowly placed on their personal and, with Eva, sexual peccadilloes, “Shield” can threaten to veer into chick-flick territory. The playwright’s probing intelligence and compassion are much better served in addressing a series of interwoven ironies: how zealotry and inflexibility can defeat good intentions, which are usually complicated to begin with; how an increasingly interconnected world can actually promote a lack of transparency and accountability; and all that can be lost in translation, or interpretation, as disparate people — be they members of the same family or citizens of different countries — seek empathy from each other.The actors generally thrive under May Adrales’s whip-smart direction. Cindy Cheung makes Julie’s type-A rigidity and self-righteousness so credible that it becomes grating at times. Ruibo Qian’s Eva, in contrast, is at once authentic and consistently sympathetic, even when the character’s self-destructive impulses grow frustrating.Fang Du proves an endearing, charismatic Narrator, while Michael C. Liu is starkly moving as the broken Chinese professor. Among the Caucasian actors, Max Gordon Moore stands out as the ONYS exec — a petulant, overgrown frat boy in a suit — and Gillian Saker impressively doubles as an only slightly less egregious corporate attorney and a kind, earthy activist who warms to Eva.As Ms. King’s story takes us from Washington, D.C., to Dallas to Beijing, moving forward and backward between 2006 and 2016, the scenic design — provided by a collective called dots — folds Asian accents into a mostly minimalist set dominated by sleek panels, except for a small, cozily furnished space representing the professor’s home. It’s as if the modest comforts the professor elects to sacrifice are being contrasted with the uncompromising grandeur of Julie’s crusade, which, we’re reminded, poses relatively little risk to the crusader herself. Although “Golden Shield” doesn’t glitter throughout and ends a bit awkwardly, the questions it poses resonate long after the lights go down.

This Play’s Two Translators Might Give a Clue as to Its Challenges

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