Story of love, longing and loss transcends boundaries

Lai is surprised by how easy some things are to get through and how hard others are. He feels that the reason this play clicks with a US audience is the same reason it rings true in China today－29 years after its inception.

As Roberta Kent wrote in Ashland Daily Tidings, the play "is sophisticated storytelling whatever its original language or particular storytelling technique. Lai makes the intricacies of Chinese comic opera as accessible as the Marx Brothers or The Three Stooges. Lai's cultural mash-up works on multiple levels. Some of the play's elements seem a bit strange at first but broad physical comedy and stories of heart-wrenching loss are universal".

Decker called it "entertaining, even goofily funny at times", and "also a thoughtful, layered work that explores the anguish of people separated from their loved ones, the weight of a violent history and the way such emotional pain colors every aspect of life".

Building on its success, OSF plans to present two more plays that require more Asian-American actors next season－a new Vietnamese-American play, and an Asian version of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, in which half of it will be set in dynastic China and the other half in the Old American West, says Rauch.

Meanwhile, the classic Chinese production with Huang Lei and He Jiong in principal roles is revived every year and sold out for most shows. A new production featuring more youthful talents will be installed in a Shanghai theater specially outfitted for Lai's works. Whoever in the cast and whatever the language, Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land never fails to elicit tears and laughs in seamless harmony.

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