Shanghai Dolls review – treachery and affinity between the women of Mao's world

The Guardian

11-04-2025

It begins with accidental friendship between an actor practising her lines at a theatre in Shanghai and a grieving teenager whose father has just died, but who shows a natural gift for directing when she gets pulled into rehearsals. Lan Ping (Gabby Wong) and Li Lin (Millicent Wong), begin working together in the theatre and sharing a home. We follow their trajectory of friendship and betrayals, refracted through seismic events in 20th-century Chinese history.
Playwright Amy Ng is also a historian and bases her drama on the 'untold true story' of these women, who rise in power and position in communist China. Lan Ping goes from revolutionary actor, who talks of destroying the strictures of patriarchy, to become Chairman Mao's wife and the architect of the Cultural Revolution. Meanwhile, Li Lin, the daughter of a communist martyr who is later adopted by Mao's number two, becomes China's foremost theatre director.
In their early friendship, they pledge never to betray each other but do just that when political ideology, power and ambition gets in the way. The play traces their moving positions toward art, the party and how to survive in it as a woman.
Under the direction of Katie Posner, this is as much an ideas play as a drama of a fateful female friendship. Debate dominates with talk of creative independence for artists and whether the Communist party can bring freedom for women or stifle their progress. Lan Ping thinks the latter, and is later politically silenced. Li Lin's position of absolute faith in the party changes too. Both women have powerful male patrons whom they need to survive, and there is an ongoing discussion around Ibsen's Nora. In the early scenes especially, they seem like mouthpieces for their political positions and this hampers emotion or intimacy from building.
There is a lot of history to digest too; the plot streaks across almost 60 years in 80 minutes. We go from civil war between the Chinese Communist party and the nationalists in the 1930s to wars with Japan, the establishment of the People's Republic of China, famine and Cultural Revolution. Sometimes it leaves you behind in its welter of names and events. There are jumps through time – the historical backdrop shifts with each scene and with it the women's lives. It is not always immediately clear what has happened, how it has affected them or who they have become.
What helps to adrenalise the story and bring context is Jean Chan's fluidly moving set and Akhila Krishnan's video design, with projected illustrations and bursts of colour that bear the aesthetics of a graphic novel and bring visual drama. Nicola T Chang's electronic music design adds to it, culminating in a spectacular blood red set-piece, with a blaze of sound, light and movement.
It ends with real-life footage of the women, which finally brings the emotion that has hitherto been missing. This is a handsome production and it is remarkable that Ng has unearthed the story of this friendship, but for all its colour it leaves emotional gaps.
At Kiln theatre, London, until 10 May