Healing through Humor: How This Seattle Public Theatre Debut Stole our Hearts

Some shows win you over slowly. Li at Seattle Public Theater is not one of those shows. This one has you hooked as soon as the protagonist emerges from the wings, looks you straight in the eye, and says, “Let me introduce myself.” That bold opening sets the tone for a production that uses humor and direct audience connection to explore what it means to feel unseen and how healing can take place in unexpected ways. In a venue as small and close as Seattle Public Theater, Li is able to comfortably break the fourth wall and speak to the audience again and again throughout the show in a natural extension of the space’s intimacy. Ultimately, that intimacy is the heart of the show: since Li speaks directly to us, the production turns the audience into an active part of her journey. As a result, this world premiere feels less like a debut, and more like a fully realized story that thrives on the intimacy of the space and the unfiltered way Li lets us into her world.

Even before the play begins, the environment truly sets the tone and primes you for the intimacy that the show thrives on. A buzzing crowd squeezes through a congested hallway just outside the performance space. Instead of feeling isolated from the story in your seat, simply sitting in the room allows everyone to become part of a shared energy, part of the same narrative they are watching unfold. That sense of communal presence becomes essential once Li, a thief from Inner Mongolia, introduces herself. Played enthusiastically by Adele Lim, Li is our narrator, and throughout the show, she continues to joke with us and confide her worries with us. Our laughter and shock become part of the rhythm of the play, creating a pure feedback loop of joy where the actors and the audience feed off of each other.

The plot unfolds through Li’s eyes. She lives in Hohhot with her emotionally distant mother, whose affection seems only to reach Li’s twin brother Ray, the golden child who has built a successful life in New York as a professor. Li, stuck in her hometown and watching her brother’s success from afar, has resorted to theft. She steals not out of malice, but out of habit, and even then, she’s not very good at it. When she attempts to steal a radio from a bedridden, blind elderly woman, she ends up fixing it instead, then regularly providing food and company to the woman. 

At its core, Li is a story about a woman who has always felt unloved– especially by her mother, who always introduces her brother Ray first, praises him more, and seems to reserve all her warmth for him alone. Li, on the other hand, is told she’s a disappointment, and her love for her mother is hardly reciprocated. Ray’s brain cancer diagnosis, revealed early in the show to both Li and the audience, adds a layer of urgency and tenderness. His choice to pursue stand-up comedy while he still can becomes a defining moment in the story; the final scene transforms the stage into an intimate comedy club, where Ray delivers a bittersweet performance as Li watches from the back of the house, witnessing her brother step into a version of himself she hadn’t ever imagined. Ray’s desire to become a comedian also forces Li to confront the ways she has been holding herself back and how much of her life has been shaped by feeling secondary. When Li imagines her mother thinking, “How come [Ray’s] the one who got sick, not Li?” it’s a gut punch. And yet, the show never wallows. It keeps moving and keeps us as the audience laughing.

Comedy is hard, let alone comedy that sits atop cultural tension, Li’s childhood wounds, and the news of Ray’s diagnosis. But playwright Wei He pulls it off effortlessly, and in turn, the comedic timing is razor sharp from the whole cast. Much of the show’s cultural commentary is delivered through this humorous lens. Inner Mongolia isn’t presented as some exotic backdrop to the story; instead, Li dismantles the Western imagination’s assumptions, making a clear differentiation between Inner and Outer Mongolia from the get-go. “We have cities!” she exclaims at one point, half-joking and half-exasperated. The show warmly invites the audience into a world they may not know much about–and that is one of its greatest strengths.

Musical numbers slip into the narrative every once in a while, offering relief without ever undercutting the sincerity of the story. These songs are performed not just by Li, but also by an ominous singing man in a cowboy hat. One standout sequence involves Li’s mother dumping a bin of clothes onto the floor and telling her to “sort her life out,” figuratively and literally. As Li begins to fold the clothes methodically, almost ritualistically, the man emerges to sing a haunting refrain: “those of us who stick around only exist in different stages of being forgotten.” The line cuts deep, especially for Li. She has spent her entire life feeling like the one who “sticks around” yet isn’t chosen nor celebrated. She stays in Hohhot while Ray leaves, and she even stays with the old woman she tried to steal from, even when entering her life by accident. And yet, despite all this staying, Li constantly fears that she’s forgettable and will spend the rest of her life on the sidelines. By the end of the song, Li ultimately scatters her clothes again in frustration. This moment reflects all her internal insecurity and fear and is an excellent example of how the show thrives in a raw, liminal space where Li’s humor and heartbreak coexist.

For all of Li’s confidence and clarity of tone, the show also leaves behind just a dash of incompleteness. The script withholds pieces of character exposition that could have been explored further, particularly around Li’s past and how she chose to resort to thievery (and who the ominous hat-decorated singer really is!!!). However, this is not to say that the show needs to explain everything. The production still encourages the audience to sympathize with and root for Li, creating a memorable communal experience.

Li is the kind of show that reminds you why these small, intimate theater spaces matter. Such a big component of the story is how it is told up close, with sincerity and vulnerability and bold, disarming humor. It invites the audience to participate in a collective harmony, intertwined with the characters and with everyone else in the theater. In a city full of polished productions and big-budget performances, Li stands out precisely because it doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is: a heartfelt and deeply human story.

Lead photo: Adele Lim and Owen Yen in Li. Photo by Rick Wong.

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