Good Enemy: A Play that Builds Bridges

The Minetta Lane Theatre (now apparently the Audible Theater) is what one might call, an intimate space. As such, it’s easy to scan around the room and see who is in the audience before the show starts. Admittedly, I knew little about the plot of Good Enemy. Asian cast. Daughter in college. Big secret. Strained relationship with dad. I knew why I was there though – to review the play. But as I continued to peer around the room, I began wondering what brought everyone else to see the production. The young looking college kids in the back. The two elderly couples giggling in the front. The man with his furrowed brow furiously scribbling in his notebook a row ahead of me. It felt like we were the oddest mix of people to have in a room together to be quite honest. Then, with really no pomp and circumstance at all, Francis Jue walked out onto the stage. And for some reason his presence alone commanded our respect.

Courtesy: Good Enemy/Lia Chang

Jue plays the role of Howard. Howard is a tired father whose back always seems to hurt a little and is kind of sick of everyone’s bullshit. As you can see, the play is relatable from the jump because anyone who is past the age of twelve and has a father knows that, well, their backs always hurt a little and they’re kind of sick of everyone’s bullshit. Howard has enlisted the help of a young, want-to-be film director to drive him across the country, from Los Angeles to New York, in order to surprise his college aged daughter, Momo, played by Geena Quintos. That goes…about as well as one might expect. Actually, not exactly. Howard presents as elderly and maybe kind of frail, but halfway through the road trip, the audience learns, in a rather unexpected way, that on their list of people who ain’t nothin’ to fuck with, Howard should be penciled in right under the Wu Tang clan.

Courtesy: Good Enemy

But what made Howard, the adorably cranky father, so hardened? It’s what we’re left wondering after his shocking stunt during the road trip, and it’s what his daughter has apparently been wondering all of her life. In fact, she tells him something akin to that she feels like a book whose first chapter is missing. 

The answer lies in a river back in Howard’s hometown in China. 

It’s a place that we return to repeatedly throughout the play, and it’s physically cut out into the middle of the stage. In my most sophisticated way of saying this, watching the characters swim and wash clothing in an actual pool of water on stage gave the show an element of, “that’s pretty fucking neat-o!”

Courtesy: Good Enemy

Three timelines run concurrently throughout the play: Howard visiting his daughter at college, Howard being on a road trip to get to New York, and Howard’s past life in China. Kudos to the brilliant visionary duo that is Yilong Liu (writer) and Chay Yew (director) for pulling this off in a seamless and easy to understand way. In addition to all of the other accolades that the pair deserve, they certainly deserve merit for not being the type of creatives who think that mass confusion in the audience equates to high avant-garde art. 

Howard’s life in China is shockingly dystopian – students brutalizing their teachers, people being force fed feces in order to extract confessions, family members outing each other. It seems like the stuff of horror fiction. But for millions of Chinese living under Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and the aftermath, it was unfortunately reality. The trauma from living through such horror, makes it a seemingly never ending reality for some. Following the Cultural Revolution, Howard (called Hao back in China) served as a special agent, tasked with bringing down his fellow citizens who reveled in Western delights like dancing, drinking alcohol, and finding the idea of potentially getting laid to be an enticing thought. Hao’s superior, Xiong, played by the dynamic Ron Domingo, uses a mix of fear and love to be sure that Hao never strays too far from the path of righteousness and honor.

Courtesy: Good Enemy

While undercover and on assignment, he meets a bubbly and vivacious woman named Jiahua (played by Jeena Yi) who gives him the cause and the space to evaluate his rigid, state imposed beliefs that all Western culture is the devil incarnate. Jiahua explains that the young people dancing at the nightclub are united in their audacity to believe that humans are unique and should be able to express themselves freely. “We shine so that we can find each other,” she says happily. As young Howard (Hao) falls more in love with Jiahua, we are taken on an utter thrill ride. The battle between where Hao’s loyalties lay play out at the same time as the fight over Western culture versus traditional Chinese ideals come to a head. Thankfully, Ryan Spahn, who plays “white boyfriend” is never too far away with some comic relief and Google translate.

Courtesy: Good Enemy

I don’t want to spoil too much of the play, there’s a lot of moments that make you audibly gasp. But, in the end there is a soft potential for reconciliation between Howard and his daughter. Even though it’s hard for him, Howard seems to see the value in sharing the story of his past with his daughter by way of giving her his old diary. While the past is too hard to verbalize, he seemingly has an easier time telling his daughter some of his hopes for her future.

The most poignant moment in the discussion being that he reaffirms Jiahua’s belief that every individual’s life matters. “We are not nothing,” she tells him in the middle of the play. An especially important message given the increased violence against the Asian community lately who are no doubt left feeling as though they are looked at like a dispensable collective as opposed to as uniquely human as anyone else.

“You have as much right to be here as anyone else,” Howard tells his daughter at the end of the play. While he specifically is talking to her as the daughter of an immigrant, this was reaffirming fatherly advice that any person sitting in the audience would have taken to heart. By virtue of being human — hope, dignity, and belonging are our birthrights. By virtue of living in the United States — equality, justice, and the pursuit of happiness are our rights as Americans. 

Courtesy: Good Enemy

When the applause started and the tears flowed was when I understood why everyone in the audience with their myriad of differences felt compelled to see this play. In short, it’s powerful and unifying. Our country has felt…loud lately for lack of a better word. So much of the recent rhetoric has left us divided and resentful. For instance, demanding Americans to be thankful for and celebrate diversity isn’t as effective of a tactic for racial and social harmony as many might think. Similarly, lines like “if you don’t like America then leave,” don’t stir about a sense of national pride very well either. We know that in order to prosper we all need to get along, but we just can’t. In fact, we are downright obstinate in the way we dig our heels into the ground and refuse to do so.

Shortly after seeing Good Enemy, I messaged as much of the production as I possibly could with the deep need to tell them not just that I enjoyed the play, but that I felt it was important. Why important? Its sheer ability to have a profound impact on anyone who lives here. Consider this: a cast that looks nothing like me, telling a story that I personally cannot relate to at all has single-handedly renewed my pride in being American. Every day immigrants leave behind their lives and risk so much, sometimes everything they’ve ever worked for, just to call our country home. They bring their skills and expertise and food and most importantly their stories with them. If we’re lucky enough, we get to hear those stories on the subway, or at the bar, and sometimes, even on stage. Every American is a library, full of a variety of tales, really good ones due solely to the array of who and where we come from. We should be proud of that. 

It’s my sincere hope that alongside the rest of our great American classics: A Raisin in the Sun, The Great Gatsby, and A Streetcar Named Desire that we make space for Good Enemy. It is perhaps the most visceral expression of the American immigrant and refugee experience I have ever seen. (Granted, I say that as someone who is neither an immigrant or refugee.) Good Enemy is testament that what makes us American is not just our hope for, but our belief in a better life for us and for our children.

The play has made me curious and caring (genuinely so) about the lives of people who immigrated to the US without forcing the issue. It is not preachy. It is not elitist. It’s remarkable in its ability to be relatable whether you’ve lived here your whole life or have just arrived. Good Enemy is a play which illustrates all of the deep emotions tied to simply being human: love, yearning, shame, fear, and hope. It has the power to transform even the most indifferent of hearts. You’ll belly laugh (genuinely.) You’ll feel embarrassed about how much you’re crying. But most of all, you’ll feel proud, as if you yourself had any part of this production. Actually, maybe in some ways, we all have.

Courtesy: Good Enemy/Lia Chang