Charles Francis Chan Jr.'s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery - ePublication
THE STORY: In 1967, Berkeley grad student Frank Chan and his artist-activist girlfriend Kathy Ching are staging a revolution. Amid the backdrop of ongoing war in Vietnam and a peak in the Civil Rights movement, they devise a wild, impulsive theatrical trip through the history of Asians in America, from the ancestral railways of their forebears to the shameful legacy of Charlie Chan stereotypes, all in pursuit of establishing a brand new political identity they’ve decided to call “Asian America.” CHARLES FRANCIS CHAN JR.’S EXOTIC ORIENTAL MURDER MYSTERY is a harmless sing-song orientalist minstrel show that ends in a grotesque carnival of murder!!!
“‘Ah. So.’ You’d be surprised just how much hilarity and invective the playwright Lloyd Suh can work out of those two tiny syllables. They are among the stock sayings of Charlie Chan…whose legacy Mr. Suh inspects and implodes in the very messy, very funny, very angry CHARLES FRANCIS CHAN JR.’S EXOTIC ORIENTAL MURDER MYSTERY…” —The New York Times.
“[Suh]…achieves the ambitious goal of presenting heavy political issues in an altogether delightful and personal manner. Its hard-hitting political incorrectness seems the completely correct course for political theater to take…” —Theasy.
