Watch “Long” below through November 14, written by Charlie Oh, directed by Dustin Wills, starring Daniel Liu, Christian DeMarais, Tara Summers, Raymond Lee. Stage Directions – Alexander Shaw/Dustin Wills

“Long” makes me uncomfortable. By the norms of adventurous theatergoing, I suppose this is a mark in its favor.

The play by Charlie Oh, which launches Manhattan Theatre Club’s new virtual reading series, is not pornography. The gay sex acts that three of the four characters perform are not literally depicted (especially since it’s a Zoom reading), although they are graphically described. But the audience reaction is unlikely to be arousal, toggling instead between amusement at some of the cheesy scenarios and disgust at the behind-the-scenes ugliness that porn performances require — the drugs they inject, the blood and bruises and pain that they suffer through.

There is undeniable talent both in the script and in the performances, and there are some important themes, such as the stereotyping of Asian-Americans, and the nature of masculinity and power.  But “Long” uses pornography as a metaphor to explore those themes, and that’s what makes me the most uncomfortable.

Tommy Long (Daniel Liu) is successful in an industry where careers are measured in months. This is in part because he says yes to anything demanded by his boss, Erika (Tara Summers), a memorable character. Erika is a soccer mom and a no-nonsense businesswoman,  who talks of Limited Liability Companies and IRA Roths, and says things like “We’re not in the sex business. We’re in the wish fulfillment business.” Erika considers Thomas a valuable asset to the company because he is a “brand.”

“What are you Thomas?” she prompts him.

“I’m Asian”

“Race has nothing to do with it. What are you?”

“I’m a nerd.”

“What are you?”

“ A geek.”

“What are you?”

“A weak, submissive skinnyfat bitch.”

“And I love you for it. Every guy hunched over his laptop loves you for it.  They look at you and they see themselves.”

Then James (Raymond Lee), a new, ambitious, hunky and straight Asian actor,  starts working for Erika. Right away, unlike Thomas, he doesn’t do everything Erika tells him to do.  He insists he will only top. He refuses to wear a karate outfit in his first scene because he feels it perpetuates a stereotype. Thomas is surprised, and impressed that James gets away with this – and it transforms him.

“Long” uses the power dynamics between Thomas and James to explore large themes of masculinity, racism, homophobia, and issues of domination and submission – and, in a climactic scene, to establish a connection between the stereotyping of  Asian-Americans and the history of Western attitudes toward the East.  The approach might remind knowledgeable theatergoers of David Henry Hwang’s “M Butterfly.” Hwang explored his themes elliptically through the metaphor of the true story of a French diplomat who passed secrets to a female Chinese opera star who was actually a male spy.

Oh chooses to use gay sex as his far blunter metaphor.  Just like gay men either fuck or are fucked (to use the language of the play), so Western countries have fucked Asian nations and Asian people.  But this analogy is at best imprecise.   The top/bottom dichotomy exists in pornography far more than in actual gay relationships. And the romp through West-East history in “Long” is clever, but in a crude, reductive way — with Liu impersonating Asian victims (eg Japan invaded by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853) as if a sub in an S&M porno,  and Lee providing an alternative history as a strong Asian man making a sexual conquest – with the narrator reading the stage directions over and over again: “They fuck the racism out of history.”

This at least has the benefit of clarity; maybe people will cheer. By contrast, the play is muddled in tracing the changes in both Thomas and James,  and their evolving relationship, which seems at times to be an exploration of the glories of being submissive (“Everybody has a little bit of sub in them,” Thomas says to James.) “Long” begins to feel less like a story about porn and more like a storyline from it.