Stage Notes: China: The Whole Enchilada

Mark Brown is having a good summer. His play, Around the World in 80 Days, a dramatization of the Jules Verne classic, opened to good reviews at the Irish Repertory in July, and it plays till September. Also, cosmic timing finds China: The Whole Enchilada, his comedy about China, opening at the NY Fringe Festival while Beijing is hosting the Olympics. Brown wrote the music and lyrics, Paul Mirkovich contributed additional music and arrangements and Jim Helsinger directed this play, which stars three male actors representing the most populous country in the world and features dance, song, slapstick and Borscht Belt jokes. I spoke with Brown, an experienced Hollywood actor as well as writer, by phone.

How would you pitch your play if you were in Hollywood?

It is the entire history of China in under two hours -- it’s really the whole enchilada.

Can you give me an example of what we are going to see and hear.
Ming the Merciless and Fu Manchu. They have a song together, “Evil is a Yellow Face.”

No, you’re kidding.
Part of that sketch is about The Yellow Peril, and how the Chinese have been treated in the U.S. They’re upset because they were the number one pulp villains in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s. Then the Nazis became the go-to villains, then the Russians,and now it’s Al-Qaeda, and they’re really falling down on the list. So they want to get back to being number one.

What else?
We cover the inventions, fireworks, paper, ice cream, calculating pi to the longest number. Also, chopsticks; I read a report that said prolonged use of chopsticks can cause osteo-arthritis.

Uh-huh.
We cover every law the U.S. had about the Chinese entering the country. That was an ugly moment in U.S. history. There’s a song about foot-binding.

How does the show proceed?
We start at the beginning of the universe, and go through the way they believed it started. “Peking Man” is a loungey song, very Vegasy. We go through the dynasties, including the Carringtons... The invasion of the Mongols, Kubla Kahn and Genghis Khan. We do a French can-can number, but we call it a “Khan-Khan.” And there’s an appearance by Ricardo Montalban.

So is it all made up?
A girl I know who grew up in Taiwan read the script and she said to me, “Our history classes finally made sense.”

So everything historical is true?
Well, they did not invent the fortune cookie. That was done in San Francisco. And they didn’t invent adding “in bed,” which you’re supposed to say after reading the fortune.

And your entire cast is three men?
Three Caucasian men. They sing, they re-enact the entire history of China. There are songs throughout. We run as fast as we can.

As part of The New York International Fringe Festival, Michael Schimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Pace University, 3 Spruce St., (212) 420-88877. Aug. 8–24. $15.