To write yourself into your own play is to put on a very curious mask. If it’s flattering, is it honest? If it’s honest, why bother?
Those questions, both as artistic choices and as problems of social identity, are powerfully and hilariously engaged in the revival of David Henry Hwang’s “Yellow Face” that opened on Tuesday at the Todd Haimes Theater. The answers are deliberately equivocal. On one hand, this Roundabout production, directed (as was the 2007 original) by Leigh Silverman, stars the exceedingly likable and handsome Daniel Dae Kim as Hwang’s stand-in, called DHH. On the other, this DHH is a worm.
So too is the sinuous story, which requires a ton of exposition to get on its way. DHH, exactly like Hwang, won a 1988 Tony Award for his Broadway debut, “M. Butterfly.” His 1993 follow-up, “Face Value,” won only notoriety. Closing before its official New York opening, it earned the nickname “M. Turkey.”
“Face Value” was Hwang’s theatrical response to the “Miss Saigon” controversy, in which the producer Cameron Mackintosh, importing that megamusical from London in 1991, sought to import its star, Jonathan Pryce, as well. But because Pryce is white, and his character is Eurasian, protests against the casting ensued. Nevertheless, the show went on — and on and on — with Mackintosh dismissing the dispute as “a storm in an Oriental teacup.”
Hence “Face Value”: a broad farce, set in part at the “Imperialist Theater,” about the casting of a white actor in the title role of a musical called “The Real Fu Manchu.”
“Yellow Face” recaps that history in a style that is less farce than mockumentary. As DHH refers to events and articles, we see them enacted or quoted by a protean supporting cast. It is not irrelevant that, just like Pryce, these actors are matched to roles without regard to gender or race — or rather are deliberately mismatched to scramble expectations. Shannon Tyo plays (among others) Cameron Mackintosh and Gish Jen; Marinda Anderson plays Jane Krakowski and Al Gore; Kevin Del Aguila plays Ed Koch and BD Wong. All are wonderfully inventive.
So is “Yellow Face.” Leaving the factual record behind, Hwang now fantasizes a “Face Value” redo. In this alternative history, the leading role of an Asian American protester is played not, as in real life, by Wong, but by an unknown actor named Marcus G. Dahlman.
Dahlman is, as DHH has demanded, and as Ryan Eggold beamishly delivers in the role, “a straight, masculine Asian leading man.” Except for the Asian part. Dahlman is patently white.
Having tamped its explosives so tightly, the play now explodes into a thousand gorgeous paradoxes as DHH becomes progressively more ridiculous. Fearful of exposure, he encourages Marcus to change his last name to something ambiguous while reframing his vague ethnicity as potentially Asian. In doing so, he steps well beyond the sins of Mackintosh.
But a smart thing about “Yellow Face,” aside from the authorial self-defamation, is that as it gets more hopelessly tangled and thus funny it also gets more serious and thus damning. The questions of identity considered as cultural matters in the first half become personal and political in the second.
The switch is flipped by Hwang’s father, a prominent California banker called HYH. In Francis Jue’s masterly performance, he is, at first, an upbeat champion of the American dream: a success in a country where anyone can be, in his heart, Gary Cooper. But when HYH becomes the object of congressional overreach (and racist suspicion) during the Chinese banking investigations of the late 1990s, he is crushed.
By the time DHH himself gets drawn into that story, in an interview with a New York Times reporter played by Greg Keller at his skeeviest, the play’s own mask has come off. Identity is not what a person shows; it’s only what others inalterably see.
I don’t remember feeling the weight of that insight, or for that matter, the levity of the jokes, when I saw the 2007 production. Part of the improvement in this revival is, no doubt, the result of cuts, fine-tuning and rewritten scenes. The elimination of the intermission helps too; the two halves of the story don’t separate like a sauce. And there’s something to be said for the way a Broadway house, when a solid play is sized up to suit it, responds by giving it space to breathe.
There’s also something to be said for Kim’s modesty in accepting that the play is ultimately not about DHH but his father. Watching him defer to Jue is moving in itself and smart for the impact.
It helps that Jue is now 61. When he played the role in 2007, in his mid-40s, he deservedly won an Obie even if he was too young for the part. Now he’s old enough to truly embody the tragedy of disillusionment in the comedy of identity — as, I hope, are we.
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