Playwright: Christopher Chen. At: Silk Road Rising at Chicago Temple Pierce Hall, 77 W. Washington St. Tickets: 312-857-1234 or www.silkroadrising.org; $35. Runs through: Nov. 23
There's an intriguing concept behind The Hundred Flowers Project, a 2012 play by Christopher Chen now making its Chicago debut courtesy of Silk Road Rising. It's a very meta theater piece that explores the turbulent history of China under Chairman Mao Zedong via a modern-day collective theater company trying to creating a non-linear collaborative theater performance art piece about the 21st-century resonances of the 20th-century Chinese Communist revolutionary leader.
If that sounds very busy and complex, it is. One of many problems with The Hundred Flowers Project is that Chen's ultimate execution become far too clever by halfparticularly in the head-scratching second act. Though I could guess at what Chen was getting at in the fantastical and metaphorical second half, I'm sure other audience members will angrily lose patience in puzzling what's happening.
The Hundred Flowers Project starts off low key as we see the theater collective's leading playwright, Mel ( Mia Park ), taking in ideas from the company of actors and tech designers during rehearsals. Some performers, like Aidan ( Joseph Sultani ) and Lily ( Hannah Toriumi ), quietly think the approach is a bit bonkers, while others like Mike ( Karmann Bajuyo ) and Sam ( Kroydell Galima ) have more confidence.
But Mel is threatened by the presence of Mike's hastily married outsider wife, Julie ( Melissa Canciller ), and her one contributing idea for a more linear storytelling approach via a journalist character. Julie herself is uncomfortable since Mike and Lily used to be an item, and she resents the time her husband spends with such insular artists.
Now there are some very amusing moments and fun performances in the first act when it becomes clear how Mel manipulates the people in her collective company to get her own way. And the multimedia montages focusing on the Cultural Revolution do find resonances with modern-day issues like the relentless march of technology crushing older generations who fail to keep up, or how easily people can be manipulated into manufactured revolutions. ( Look at the rise of the Tea Party movement in the United States. )
However, things definitely go off the rails when it's suggested that a malevolent Mao spiritual force has taken control of the theater collective and built up a number of delusional success stories as a way to crush an outsider like Julie, who takes on the persona of a Journalist character for Act II. And that's despite the functional directing work of Joanie Schultz who works very well with video projection designer Michael Stanfill to create a number of interesting stage images.
Silk Road Rising's The Hundred Flowers Project is certainly full of ideas and theatricality. But Chen's unconventional approach proves to be more patience-testing than entertaining or enlightening.