Drama Review: An Affecting Revival of David Henry Hwang’s Early Drama Explores Art and the American Dream in Early California

"The Dance and The Railroad," Los Angeles Theater Center, Oct. 3 - Nov. 1, 2026

Oct. 25, 2026 | By Bruce R. Feldman

You usually can expect three things from a David Henry Hwang play.

It will submit for our consideration complex characters facing challenging consequences concerning the Asian immigrant experience around the globe. It will somehow weave Chinese opera into the plot. And these and other components will nest within a framework of lyricism, and compassion for the human condition.

Scott Keiji Takeda and Tony Jin (Photo: Michael Palma)

You also can count on the Latino Theater Company to honor every drama it presents with a thoughtful yet stimulating production that while modest will be extremely professional, inspiring, and satisfying.

These pleasures are all on offer in the LTC and Artists at Play’s sympathetic, affecting revival of The Dance and the Railroad.

An Intimate Chamber Piece With a Larger American Story

The hour-long drama – it’s really a chamber piece – was the Hwang’s follow-up to his first produced play, FOB, an Off-Broadway hit in 1980. It predates Hwang’s most famous and fully realized work, M. Butterfly, which debuted in 1988.

The Dance and the Railroad offers a roadmap to what was to come in that Tony Award- winning play. Both are elegiac accounts taking place in an earlier era that in Hwang’s sensitive text and director Katherine Chou’s capable hands feels timeless and spiritual.

Both involve Asian characters in conflict with Western values and hegemony. Both display the dramatist’s intellect. Both make the audience think and feel long after the curtain has come down.

Two Immigrants Search for Common Ground in a New Country

Set in rural California during the 1867 Chinese railroad workers’ strike, The Dance and the Railroad follows two laborers: Ma (Scott Keiji Takeda), an optimistic recent immigrant hoping to make his fortune, and Lone (Tony Jin), a pragmatic former Chinese opera actor sent by his parents to work in America.

Away from the labor camp, Lone reluctantly teaches Ma Chinese opera. As their friendship deepens, they reflect on the homes they left, the futures they hope to build, and the meaning of the American Dream.

Blending the beauty and refinement of Chinese opera, The Dance and the Railroad becomes an intimate portrait of friendship and of how art and personal history shape America’s larger story.

Strong Performances Illuminate Hwang’s Exploration of Art and Identity

The play is a two-hander. Takeda and Jin give strong, persuasive performances that hold the viewer’s attention for what is essentially a discourse with little action and plot. Chou has guided them skillfully and imbued the overall production with a kind of ethereal gloss that effectively underscores the characters’s humanity and serves Hwang’s lyrical writing.

The production design is minimal but effective. The technical credits solidly support Chou's vision, starting out with a thundering train sound cue that explodes across the theater to make us pay attention to the story to come.

The Dance and the Railroad is a co-presentation of Latino Theatre Co. and Artists at Play, the Los Angeles-based theater collective dedicated to exploring the Asian experience.

See this lovely production while you can. Its run ends next week.

"The Dance and the Railroad" Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles CA 90013, (213) 489-0994, latinotheaterco.org