The Four Seas Players have been staging plays for New York's Chinese community since October 1970. This weekend the troupe opens its fall production, Shadow of the Unhinged, a Cantonese-language drama set inside a psychiatric ward, in the Underground Theater at Abrons Arts Center on Grand Street. It runs seven performances over two weekends, through Sunday, Nov. 1.

The play

As Abrons describes it, the story follows Ng Ka-Kui, a fearless man full of energy who is committed to a psychiatric ward run with an iron hand by its head nurse. Once inside, he stirs his fellow patients to reclaim their sense of their own dignity. The production deals with freedom and oppression, and with resistance and what it costs. Amanda Hall directs.

The play is performed in Cantonese with Chinese and English subtitles, so audiences who do not speak Cantonese can follow it line by line.

Showtimes

  • Saturday, Oct. 24, at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.
  • Sunday, Oct. 25, at 3 p.m.
  • Friday, Oct. 30, at 8 p.m.
  • Saturday, Oct. 31, at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.
  • Sunday, Nov. 1, at 3 p.m.

Tickets are sold through the Abrons Arts Center website, on the program page for the production.

A Chinatown troupe, 56 years on

The Four Seas Players were founded in Chinatown in October 1970 by Dr. Joanna Chan, Sun Fu Lo, Dr. Leo Yam and Chung Lo. They started the company as an outreach program for young people and newly arrived immigrants, a place to make theater in their own language. The name comes from a saying that within the four seas, all people are brothers.

More than half a century later, the company is still producing community theater, and the Lower East Side is still where it performs. Abrons Arts Center, the arts arm of Henry Street Settlement, sits a few blocks east of the Chinatown streets where the troupe began, and presents this run through its rentals program.

Halloween weekend on Grand Street

The second weekend lands on Halloween, with two performances on Saturday, Oct. 31. For families who want something seated and indoors between trick-or-treating and the parades elsewhere in Lower Manhattan, the 3 p.m. show is an option; the 7 p.m. performance falls during the evening rush of costumed crowds, so plan travel time accordingly.

Abrons also has a free program for the youngest audiences the same weekend this production opens: Flying Leap's The Garden, an outdoor performance for children up to age 5, in English, Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese, at Corlears Hook Park on Saturday, Oct. 24, at 2:15 and 3:30 p.m. Free tickets are reserved through Abrons.

How to go

Abrons Arts Center is at 466 Grand Street, at the corner of Pitt Street. The closest trains are the F at East Broadway or Delancey Street and the J, M and Z at Essex Street; the M14A and M22 buses stop nearby. Shadow of the Unhinged plays in the Underground Theater from Saturday, Oct. 24, through Sunday, Nov. 1.

Sources