‘King of the Yees’ Review: Daughter’s Day

metroweekly.com:

King of the Yees (★★★☆☆), making its D.C. premiere with Jennifer Chang’s lively production at Signature.By, about, and chock full of Yees, real and fictional, and set partly inside a Chinatown social club dedicated to bringing Yees together, King of the Yees digs deep at one family’s roots to harvest a universal tale of daughter-father love and admiration.

There’s conflict, too, but not much as the play loops through several storytelling styles, layering a play within the play, and even a version of the playwright within the play.The playwright Lauren Yee being portrayed onstage with bubbly determination by Ashley G.

Nguyen is in the midst of rehearsals for her new semi-autobiographical play King of the Yees. She occasionally ponders out loud what it’s about, which is tantamount to actual playwright Lauren Yee pondering the intent and meaning of this play.Occasionally, the real Yee responds, via her onstage avatar, with clear-cut declarations of what the play’s about, and, for one thing, it’s about North America’s dying Chinatowns.Here, we’re in the original Chinatown, in San Francisco, where Yee’s dad Larry stewards the Yee Fung Toy Family Foundation, a decades-old, almost exclusively male social club and community organization for immigrant Chinese Yees and their family members.

The Yee Fung Toy is part of a network of once-vital namesake-based community clubs that, reflecting the stated theme, have generally seen better days.The chapter overseen by Larry Yee, played in a winning turn by Grant Chang, is flagging, if not dying, due to the changing times, demographics, and policies on real estate and immigration.