Richard Chang (Photo: Jeremy Varner)
Ai Yah Goy Vey!
By Julia Polinsky
Richard Chang’s Ai Yah Goy Vey!, now at A.R.T./New York Theatres, is this winter’s offering from the Pan Asian Repertory. Subtitled “Adventures of a Dim Sun in Search of His Wanton Father,” the play’s junior-high level of punning humor thus shows up before things even get started.
Start they do, as Chang rides into the theater on a bicycle. In keeping with the Chinese/Jewish cross-cultural flavor of the show – “Ai Yah” and “Oy Vey” are the same kind of multipurpose exclamations, one Chinese, one Yiddish. Chang patters directly to the audience in a dialect you never hear anywhere but here – call it Brooklyn Chinese, or Chinatown Yiddish. Whatever. He’s clearly a New York City Chinese delivery guy, payess dangling from his glasses and a bag of food dangling from one hand.
Chang’s talents certainly lie in the physical comedy of the show, and his wonderful voice. He pulls off, to greater or lesser effect, the many accents that he needs for the many characters in Ai Yah Goy Vey! Just for starters, we meet him as a whiskey priest, a belly dancer, a homeboy, his mother the Chinese opera diva, and LaKeisha the singer in Harlem.
Richard Chang (Photo: Jeremy Varner)
The costume changes that go toward building these characters (costumes from Karen Boyer) are creative suggestions rather than full-on costumes, and there could have been more rehearsal or better preparation for some of the changes. Chang supplies his own headwear and props, including the amazing Chinese Opera wig as well as the glasses-with-payess he wears when being Jackie Sun, “…your professional Chinese food delivery guy.”
Richard Chang (Photo: Jeremy Varner)
It’s a little challenging to speak of a plot or storyline, as Ai Yah Goy Vey! seems to be more one long series of, believe it or not in this day and age, ethnic jokes. In a popular culture that has pretty much sanitized ethnic jokes out of existence, it’s borderline shocking to hear cracks like, “… order extra soy sauce. That’s why your skin so dark,” directed at a Black audience member, or a mother-son duet in heavily accented Chinglish that uses the tune of “Hava Nagila.”
Yet somehow, Ai Yah Goy Vey! comes off as neither mean nor cruel. That’s kind of a neat trick, since most ethnic jokes are either or both. It’s likely due to Chang himself, who seems to be having a good old time without malicious intent. Director Laura Josepher has let him have free rein, moving himself around scenic designer Sheryl Liu’s pretty-colored platforms, ramps, and steps as he searches for Papa, in lighting from Samantha Weiser and against projections from Scott Leff.
Finding Papa seems not to happen. Or maybe it does. It’s far from the point, which seems to be trying to make an audience laugh (middling success), demonstrating Chang’s skill at physical humor (slightly more success) and maybe making a point that every immigrant has a story (lost in the sauce).
If ethnic jokes and broad physical humor are your jam, you can pass 75 entertaining minutes at Ai Yah Goy Vey! If your ethnic-humor buttons are easily pushed, this is not the show for you.
At A.R.T/New York Theatres
502 W 53rd St
Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes, no intermission
Through March 1, 2026
