Frank Chin Critical Essay | Critical Review by John Simon

Critical Review by John Simon

SOURCE: "Now You See It—Now You Don't," in New York Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 24, 17 June 1974, p. 76.

In the following negative assessment of The Year of the Dragon, Simon contends that Chin "exhibits a lack of discipline and tendency to attitudinize" in the play.

"Coming of age" is the basic subject of two essentially realistic new plays, the splashier but also more irritating of which is Frank Chin's The Year of the Dragon at the American Place Theater. The Chinese-American author has flashes of wit and flights of anger, a felicitous mordancy here, a bit of a genuine ache there. But, as in his first play, The Chickencoop Chinaman, he again exhibits a lack of discipline and tendency to attitudinize; this domestic tragicomedy finally differs from soap opera only in its ethnic coloration and greater vagueness—incidents and people remaining unclarified out of sheer dramaturgic irresponsibility. The themes...
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