Is “Tiger Style!” Out of Style?

Last week, the theater and dance department (THDA) put on Mike Lew’s “Tiger Style!” with a three-show run from Thursday to Saturday. Directed by Wesley Guimarães ’19, the two-act play follows third-generation Chinese Americans, Albert (Harry Kim ’27) and Jennifer Chen (Lauren Rainey ’28), as they travel to China to reconcile with their dual identities.

The plot begins with both siblings realizing that, despite their achievements, they are dissatisfied with their lives. Both attended Harvard University for their undergraduate degrees. Jennifer went on to Harvard Medical School and is now a “double M.D./Ph.D.” with an oncology fellowship, while Albert works as a programmer at MedCo. 

A part of this dissatisfaction stems from each sibling’s struggle with their interpersonal relationships. Albert’s coworker, Russ the Bus (Sebastian Golderer ’28), makes Albert do his work and takes credit for it all; Russ is soon promoted over Albert despite Albert’s experience. Meanwhile, Jennifer’s boyfriend, Reggie (also Sebastian Golderer ’28), breaks up with her because he realizes Jennifer isn’t as “exotic” as he thought she would be. The siblings tie these frustrations to their parents’ strict, “suck it up” style of parenting — they were taught to value only their grades and achievements, which severely stunted their emotional growth and decision-making as adults.

The pair confront their parents, demanding an apology, only to be rebuffed. They then decide to go “full Western” in an attempt to embrace their American side: Jennifer goes to therapy, and Albert stands up for himself at work. But these choices result in Jennifer and the therapist (Angel Fu ’28) getting into an argument, while Albert’s boss, Melvin (Colin Sueyoshi ’26), fires Albert for making Melvin look bad. 

Feeling that they don’t belong in the United States because of their dual identity, they travel to China, expecting to feel more at home. The play’s two acts demarcate its shift in location: Act 1 is set in the U.S., while Act 2 covers the siblings’ trip in China and the complications that ensue when they encounter problems with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The difficult thing about reviewing a production like last week’s “Tiger Style!” is divorcing the production itself from the story Lew wrote. Lew, a Chinese American playwright and third-generation Southern California native, was inspired to write “Tiger Style!” after reading Amy Chua’s 2011 memoir, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” which details Chua’s strict parenting style. The play was first performed in 2016, with a renewed run in 2019 and another as recently as 2023. But it’s difficult to see what, if anything, Lew’s story says that hasn’t been said already, and it’s even more unclear how much of what Lew was trying to say translated into last week’s production.

From a stage-design perspective, this production seemed confused about what it wanted to be. Lew’s text clearly aims to be a farce, given that so many of its characters are walking stereotypes and that a lot of its humor banks on absurd scenarios instead of witty punchlines (more on that later). Yet the actual set feels disconnected from this idea, given that it doesn’t lean very much into the exaggerated style of the play. Besides a background with silhouettes of palm trees and high-rises, the set had two walls on either side of the stage, which constantly had images and photos projected onto them. While these projections often conveyed the location — an overstory for a park, a facade for a house, a wall of generic computer code for a programmer’s office — they felt more like crutches than a necessity. I can very easily imagine a version of “Tiger Style!” with almost no projections (a quick Google search will tell you I’m right).

I also got the sense that the set was torn, trying conceptually to do too much at once: It attempts to capture both the California sunset aesthetic, with its orange backdrop and palm tree silhouettes, as well as a vaguely “oriental” atmosphere communicated by pagoda roof tiles placed on either end of the aforementioned walls. While I understand that this design is meant to communicate a passageway between the U.S. and China — a metaphor for the siblings’ dual identity and the play’s shift in location — it conveys “identity crisis” more than “middle ground.” Is it intentional that both the siblings and production are apparently undergoing an identity crisis? I’m not sure. Either way, the design’s intention doesn’t change what it actually communicated: a set that wanted to have it both ways and ended up taking neither path because it couldn’t commit to any of them. 

Some of the sound choices were also confusing. Several comedic beats, for instance, were cued by cartoonish sound effects. But they often felt like the laugh tracks producers tack onto mediocre sitcoms to make them appear funny, like slapping a Band-Aid onto a gunshot wound. For example, one beat toward the end of the play was awkwardly cued by a sad trombone sound effect (yes, that one, the one that just played in your head); that I can’t remember the joke but I can remember the sound effect speaks volumes.

Moreover, the hip-hop music during transitions matched neither the playtext nor the set design. There is a style and charisma in hip-hop that “Tiger Style!” simply couldn’t capture. Perhaps nothing more would convince you that this play is suffering an identity crisis than this: The play’s first half is ostensibly set in suburban California, and yet it opens with a sample from the Wu Tang Clan — a group based in Staten Island.

What saves this production is its acting, which is where many of its comedic moments shine. Some notable examples include when the mother (Angel Fu ’28) and father (Colin Sueyoshi ’26) offer their rebuttals to Albert and Jennifer’s complaints, and when Jennifer refuses to respect her therapist after discovering the therapist doesn’t have an M.D. That being said, there were still a few moments of incongruity within the acting: We are constantly reminded that Albert is a “robot,” even though Kim plays him as a rather emotional person — the lack of direction from the text makes it hard to tell whether this choice was intentional or not.

Then there’s the script itself, which is rescued by its ending (I cannot aptly describe it because too many things happen). The ending stands out as feeling more mature than the rest of the script; to quote “Hamlet,” there is “a plentiful lack of wit” in Lew’s treatment of his subject material. For a play that’s extremely concerned with stereotypes and representation, Act 2 portrays China only through caricatures — China in the world of “Tiger Style!” is rife with state employees with plastic smiles who constantly correct themselves after saying “surveillance,” as though the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a gun to their heads.

Perhaps we are meant to see China through Albert and Jennifer’s distorted view of the country. But this could be true only to a certain extent; the caricature suggesting the CCP keeps Chinese society in a chokehold, like Big Brother does to Oceania in “1984,” can’t reasonably reflect neither Albert nor Jennifer’s perspectives, as they don’t enter China with any preconceptions of the country’s totalitarian regime and are even surprised when Google doesn’t work on their phones. 

I can think of only two reasons why Lew would depict China in this simplistic way: plot and humor. The plot motivation is simple: Albert and Jennifer are later arrested for being too American. But a lot of the play’s humor is less funny than it is confusing and sometimes grating — I remember later talking about “Tiger Style!” with some international students, either from China or of Chinese descent, and many of them found the play offensive. 

The play also doesn’t dive very deep into Asian American identity, either. Its ostensible lesson, which is to accept one’s dual identity instead of caving into stereotypes, is irritatingly familiar. It feels like a monumental step backward compared to how authors across all mediums treat the subject matter today: gently, and usually without disparaging other countries. But I don’t know if I can blame Lew entirely. The play’s initial performance predates more mature stories like “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” (though it’s not comedic by any means) and “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

What I’m still having difficulty understanding is why the THDA department decided this play was the right one right now — it’s nice to have humor at a moment when the country’s mood feels so grim, but that doesn’t automatically translate to cheap jokes and talking points that feel unbelievably dated. Is it really necessary to put on a play with such weak, tone-deaf, juvenile punchlines like “Chinese people hug?” when so many people are anxious about our nation’s future? A play that has clearly alienated some international students at a school where international students make up 10 to 13% of the college’s student body and are also worried about their futures in the U.S.?

I’ll admit that I’m not that well-read on Asian American drama, but surely there’s a better one out there than “Tiger Style!”