Review: Ai Yah Goy Vey!, an Off-Broadway Theater Takes a Stab at Ethnic Humor

Have you ever been invited to a friend’s home and unwittingly been dragooned into the audience of their precocious child’s solo show? It starts innocently enough, with a funny wig and a few bars of a song, but pretty soon you’re watching a full workshop of little Bryleigh’s Fringe Festival debut—laughing and clapping politely while silently praying that it will end. That’s the feeling I had watching Richard Chang’s Ai Yah Goy Vey!, now making its world premiere with Pan Asian Repertory at A.R.T./New York Theatres.

Chang is, of course, an adult thespian masquerading as a Chinese food delivery man named Jackie Sun, his smiling face framed by thick glasses and payos. He rides a bicycle onto the stage in the play’s opening moments, shouting greetings in an accent that oscillates between fresh-off-the-plane Chinese and Brooklyn Jewish—a mid-Ocean Parkway dialect. We learn that Jackie is the love child of a Chinese opera diva and a famous Jewish comedian. He journeys from Changdao (translated here as “Long Island”) to New York City to find his papa.

All this information is contained in the subtitle, “Adventures of a Dim Sun in Search of His Wanton Father,” which should give you some indication of the puntastic 90 minutes you will endure should you purchase a ticket. There are so many groaners in this script, I literally heard groans coming from the audience.

The plot is a rickety hatstand on which Chang hangs his impressions arising from Jackie’s travels to New York’s various ethnic enclaves. We meet Irish Catholic priest Father Jack, whiskey in his flask and a song in his heart (a baffling waste of the Jackson Heights segment). There’s Russian ballerina Aida Nevasayneva, who treats us to one of Chang’s many extended dance breaks (there is much baton twirling in this show). Then there’s Harlem resident LaKeisha ShaNaeNae DeVine, who wins the award for worst accent in a night full of stiff competition.

I defy you not to cringe through a musical mother-son chat set to the tune of “Hava Nagila.” Chang has also written new lyrics to the songs “Reviewing the Situation” and “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!,” Borscht Belt standards with Chinese characteristics, all set to prerecorded music that will take you back to the golden age of the MIDI (the original music and sound is by Christopher Liang, and the sound and music is by Howard Ho).

It’s refreshing to see an off-Broadway company emerge from the long winter of woke to dabble in ethnic humor, which has for centuries added spice to our great American melting pot. Is there any surer sign that you, a thrifty Scot, are part of the club than being ribbed by the President of the United States, who as the descendant of dutchmen should know a skinflint when he sees one? We can laugh at each other (and ourselves) without being cruel or mean-spirited (as so much of what passes for humor on the MAGA right is). This is how we transcend tribe to forge a new national culture, one joke at a time.

Unfortunately, the level of Chang’s humor never rises above that of a crude vaudeville act, albeit with no malice. It certainly pales in comparison to what Sarah Jones was able to accomplish with Bridge & Tunnel. Ai Yah Goy Vey! feels like a big step backward from that 20-year-old show, which perhaps should be expected considering the angry retrenchment of free expression around race and ethnicity that has transpired in that time. Honestly, the most offensive thing about this show is how rarely it made me laugh. The audience around me frequently chuckled, but the restless legs attached to those tittering bodies told a different story.

Director Laura Josepher could have helped Chang sharpen his comic beats and half-formed characters, ensuring that lines really land (the peril of dialect work is fuzzy diction, a big problem here). But there’s only so much one can do with a mildly funny script.

Josepher does at least marshal the design team into decent work. Sheryl Liu’s set is multicolored skate park, providing Chang with plenty of levels and locations, as well as flat walls for Scott Leff’s well-produced but slightly awkward video projections (it’s just Chang acting opposite himself in prerecorded video). Karen Boyer’s colorful, stereotypical costumes serve to clarify the immigrant group Chang is sending up when his performance is lacking. And Chang himself has fashioned several clever props and hats, including an operatic crown made from bath brushes, which will almost certainly be the aspect of this show that lingers in my memory the longest.

But the rest of Ai Yah Goy Vey! is best forgotten. Though clearly well-intentioned, this off-Broadway attempt at ethnic humor is a swing and a miss.