In Shanghai Dolls, Madame Mao’s life story of art, revolution and resentment is undone by clichés

Gabby Wong and Millicent Wong as Jiang Qing and Sun Weishi in ‘Shanghai Dolls’ - (Marc Brenner)

Set in 1930s Shanghai, in a theatre that doubles as a secret socialist safe house, we meet Jiang Qing – the future wife of Mao Zedong – rehearsing Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Here, she meets Sun Weishi, who will go on to become the first female theatre director of China. But for now, they are just two penniless actors standing at the edge of upheaval, both personal and political. Based on the real lives of two women who helped define the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Shanghai Dolls explores the desire and consequences of artistic freedom.

“An obedient revolutionary, the perfect oxymoron” is how Jiang Qing is described. An actor who sees art as the path to selfhood and escape, she desires recognition – a desire so white-hot that it will lead her to become the ornamental, vengeful wife of one of the most tyrannical leaders in history. Sun, meanwhile, is already connected to the political elite. She has access to education, influence, and artistic training, all the things Jiang craves for herself. The play maps how the roles are gradually reversed, the powers shifting between them until one becomes the oppressor, and the other the oppressed.