Parents and children spend their lives constructing a family language. When they want to reveal their feelings, they can argue, plead, criticize, tease, deflect or, best of all, let humor make the point. The World Is Not Silent immerses viewers in one family’s way of communicating — and needs six languages to do it. You’ll understand them all, thanks to theatrical techniques and a great deal of comedy. Three lovable characters tell the story of a father and son looking for a way to connect and discovering that language can link or divide.
The Northern Stage production is the regional premiere of a new play by Don X. Nguyen, first performed in 2024, that includes some parallels to Nguyen’s own life. It’s a story of two generations of South Vietnamese men with two different approaches to cultural assimilation.
Dau, the father, brought his family as refugees to Lincoln, Neb., and found a Vietnamese community to join but wanted his young son to blend in with Americans. Don arrived as a preschooler and was pushed by his parents to speak perfect English; he never learned Vietnamese. Linh, the granddaughter of a family friend from Saigon, understands multiple languages and understands people even better. When she reconnects with Don and Dau, she sees clearly what they both need.
Now retired and recently widowed, Dau is losing his hearing. Fortysomething Don leaves New York City to return to the family home. His dad doesn’t need care — Dau is smart, capable and so stubborn he might not call for help if he stepped in quicksand. No crisis has occurred, unless a father wearing his pajamas all day counts as one. Coming home to Nebraska makes it easier for Don to pursue his hobby of celestial photography without the light pollution of a city. But his real motivation is to rebuild his connection with his father.
That’s where the six languages come in. All the characters speak occasional Vietnamese, but English is the play’s primary language, offered in three forms. Dau’s is halting and eccentric. Don’s is faultless. And Linh’s is newly acquired, with a solid base and limited vocabulary. Hearing them speak is truly hearing where they’ve come from. The playwright has an ear for English varieties and uses it to reveal character.
The other two languages are lifelines. Dau will likely lose his hearing entirely in a year or two, so Don decides to learn sign language to keep communicating. His father had the same brilliant idea but logically has learned Vietnamese Sign Language, while Don has studied American Sign Language. Their bridges don’t connect. They’re now further apart, and neither will acknowledge the merits of the other’s approach.
Onstage, subtitle projections translate sign language and spoken Vietnamese. The 90-minute play speeds along without an intermission, and the story spans about a year, presented in brief episodes with some flashbacks. But the characters are the focus, not the plot. Lives change in subtle ways or don’t change at all. The actors are the magic in this production.
The actors are the magic in this production.
Peter Trinh, as Dau, presents an ideal dad’s extremes: He is impossible and adorable. His maddening self-assurance comes with a grin and a track record, for he has steered his family well. Trinh’s comedic intelligence shows in every exchange as he builds a laugh from a beat or a jolt from an expression. But Dau is more than jokes; the play’s most moving moment is his recollection of a fear he overcame in silence.
As Don, Paul Yen portrays a good guy teetering under the weight of sincerity. Don loves astrophotography and revels in the difficulty of making successful pictures of light that’s traveled years to reach his telescope. The profundity of space fills him with awe, but his nervous commentary on his YouTube astrophotography channel doesn’t get past lame jokes. Yen captures a shy man struggling to stand toe to toe with his father, just to show his love.
Mai Lê originated the role of Linh in the play’s premiere in Houston. Linh is the play’s most self-assured character, yet an intensely restless one. She won’t settle easily for anything, including love, and prefers to search the world continent by continent to find what’s worthy in it. Linh is a bit of a trickster, and Lê is delightful when luring Don and Dau toward realizations that they’re too inflexible to find on their own.
The best way to watch this simple and heartwarming play is to consider it a TV series with characters whose situations were established long ago. Nguyen neglects to tell us why Don has an expensive hobby instead of a job, how Linh can afford to travel so much and how many spare rooms Dau has to house everyone. Ignore such unexplained mysteries and focus on the comedic interplay.
If the script evolves, it might offer more clarity about time and place, especially when and how the family left Vietnam. Scenic designer Frank J. Oliva’s stunning set provides all the spaces Nguyen calls for, but the play’s action simply doesn’t need that many. Spatially clever as it is, the hyperrealistic set is too big for the story.
It would swallow the characters if they weren’t so appealing. The performers radiate charm and deliver personalities that say what they mean with expressions and timing as well as words. That’s the play’s seventh language: the kinds of looks that register, that connect, that create laughter. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Reading the Signs | Theater review: The World Is Not Silent, Northern Stage”
This article appears in February 11 • 2026.
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