SOURCE: "No Cheers for the 'Chinaman'," in The New York Times, 18 June 1972, Section 2, p. 3.

In the following negative review of The Chickencoop Chinaman, Novick asserts: "There is the material for a play here, but not much of a play."

If John Osborne had been a young Chinese-American playwright of mediocre attainments, he might conceivably have written a play very much like The Chicken-coop Chinaman, which is the season's final offering at the American Place Theater.

The hero of The Chickencoop Chinaman, like Mr. Osborne's most famous hero, is loquacious, disaffected, excitable, sarcastic, angry and young; both heroes, more-over, are hung up about wives, fathers, and (especially) social injustice. And, like some of Mr. Osborne's plays, The Chickencoop Chinaman often looks like an ill-concealed pretext for a series of lengthy monologues by the protagonist. But Mr. Osborne is a master rhetorician, and Frank Chin, the author of The Chickencoop...