SOURCE: "Hardly Worth the Bother," in New York Magazine 5, No. 26, 26 June 1972, p. 54.

In the following review, Simon gives a negative appraisal of The Chickencoop Chinaman, declaring that it is "a loose aggregate of untheatrical surfaces with no real center, no dramatic propulsion and urgency. "

The Chickencoop Chinaman introduces another minority to our stage, the Chinese-Americans (and also, incidentally, the Japanese-Americans), whose problems seem to be even greater than those of the blacks because, apparently, they not only have to compete against the whites, but must also compete with the blacks in competing against the whites. Frank Chin's play at the American Place Theater has one good scene at the opening of Act II, pointed and funny, and some well-turned lines scattered throughout; but it is a loose aggregate of untheatrical surfaces with no real center, no dramatic propulsion and urgency. Emotions wax and wane quite arbitrarily; small things...