Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s uneven SNOW IN MIDSUMMER ambitiously straddles a number of genres

• By drediman
• July 14, 2022
• No Comments

After two failed attempts to see Classic Stage Company’s Off-Broadway production of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s new play Snow in Midsummer over the course of its run – due to repeated Covid infections in the cast – I was finally able to catch up with the show last weekend, its closing weekend (third time’s a charm!). Cowhig’s play is an updated adaptation of a 13th century Chinese drama that tells the story of a vengeful spirit of a woman who wreaks havoc on an industrial town in her quest for justice from beyond the grave.

Originally commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company (the piece was mounted in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2017), Cowhig’s play straddles a number of genres – Chinese mythology, family drama, ghost story, psychological thriller, gay love story, murder mystery, cautionary tale about the fragility of our environment, etc. Despite the fact that these hang together a bit tenuously and the playwright’s occasional tendency towards melodrama and pulpy stock characters, I applaud the sweep of the work’s scope and its overall ambition. And in the self-made Tianyun and the restless ghost Dou Yi, Cowhig has created two fierce and memorable female characters around which the events of the play transpire.

The Classic Stage Company production has been directed resourcefully by Zi Alikhan, whose grounded but viscerally-attuned staging admirably smooths over some of the scripts unevenness. As for the performances, there are a few actors that register stronger than others. Luckily, in the aforementioned roles of Tianyun and Dou Yi, respectively, Teresa Avia Lim and Dorcas Leung give passionate, hard-hitting performances that have stuck with me.

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SNOW IN MIDSUMMER
Off-Broadway, Play
Classic Stage Company
2 hours, 30 minutes (with an intermission)
Closed