‘Stick a woman in fatigues, put a wrench in her hand, an axe, a machine gun – they’re just props, unless she can live her life freely – take lovers, have abortions, make art not babies!’
Two penniless actresses meet at auditions for a production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in Shanghai – and they quickly become inseparable.
As political upheaval rips through China, their tumultuous friendship will alter not only the course of their lives, but the course of history. One will become China’s first female theatre director. The other, the architect of the Cultural Revolution.
Amy Ng’s play Shanghai Dolls tells the untold true story of two of the most influential women in Chinese history – Madame Mao and Sun Weishi – and how the personal truly is political. It opened at Kiln Theatre, London, in 2025, in association with Paines Plough, directed by Katie Posner.
‘Original… a story that grips and fascinates’
— WhatsOnStage
‘Fascinating and fast-moving… Ng gives us a last conversation in prison between Jiang and the tormented, battered, near-dying Sun. It’s wrenching. All the more because the fleet 80-minute journey of the play telescopes the three decades, and makes you remain aware of the light-spirited comradeship of their early meeting’
— TheatreCat
‘A pacy two-hander that provides a window into a terrifying period of Chinese history’
— London Theatre
