Chinese Republicans ★★★★

Chinese Republicans opens in a Chinatown dim sum restaurant called The Golden Unicorn, the perfect setting for this new play’s highly appetizing opening scenes, which resemble a deliciously unlikely fusion of The Joy Luck Club and Glengarry Glen Ross. (David Mamet even sets the first act of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play in a Chinese restaurant.) Four women of different generations who work in finance at the fictional Friedman Wallace investment bank have created an affinity group (“Asian Babes Changing the Game”) that meets monthly, and as the three older women anticipate the arrival of the group’s youngest member, 24-year-old Katie (Anna Zavelson), their rapid-fire repartee conveys both familiarity and brutality:

ELLEN: Get the turnip cake, too, that’s her favorite

IRIS: Turnip cake has meat, Ellen

PHYLLIS: Just don’t tell her

ELLEN: Tricking a vegetarian into eating meat, sounds real ethical

PHYLLIS: She needs to build strength. Or her annual review will grind her to dust.

Not that anyone need worry about colleague Katie. When she finally appears, it’s immediately apparent that she is more than capable of holding her own with this gang of four:

KATIE: Real question — has the MTA always been a total public failure?

ELLEN: You should’ve seen things before Giuliani

KATIE: So glad that’s where my taxes are going

Katie’s just gotten a promotion, and she’s delighted to share the celebratory news, though the group members’ individual responses are more calibrated. Iris (Jully Lee, hilarious), a Chinese immigrant working on an H-1B visa, wonders why she’s not headed in the same upward career direction as Katie, since her native language skills are wildly better than those of her three Chinese-American colleagues; mentor Ellen (Jennifer Ikeda) sees the rise of her protégée as a possible means to finally get herself promoted to partner; and Phyllis (Jodi Long), the doyenne of these overachievers, has seen it all before (“Don’t get too excited”) and would rather be having an almond croissant at Paris Baguette.

It’s a great set-up, and playwright Alex Lin embellishes her scenario with terrific dramatic intensity and a plethora of zippy one-liners. Phyllis is a particularly enticing character, a slightly embittered executive who doesn’t need a knife to cut someone down to size, as when she tells Ellen she’ll never make partner: “Here’s the bottom line. People don’t like you. Never have. Never will. Enjoy your ceiling.”

Oof for Ellen, yum for the audience.

Unfortunately, the play narratively slackens in the third scene when it veers into a nightmare game show (“Say It In Mandarin”) that Ellen fantasizes. While the scene is often wildly funny, it slows the show’s momentum and never fully regains it. That slight misstep is soon followed by a bigger one, a plot twist that alters one character’s trajectory too abruptly to feel wholly believable.

And then the show starts to feel overstuffed with ideas and twists, like a dumpling too full of savory goodness to stay contained. But if a play’s gonna have problems, these are good ones to have, as it’s never boring. The cast is excellent (Long is especially sublime), director Chay Yew never lets the pace falter, and the entire design team (Wilson Chin, Anita Yavich, Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, Fabian Obispo, Hana Kim, and Tom Watson) contributes significantly to the fun. Like any dim sum, parts of Chinese Republicans are tastier than others, and the best bits are what linger in the memory.