Broadway Reviews Theatre Review by Howard Miller - October 1, 2024 Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang. Directed by Leigh Silverman. Set design by Arnulfo Maldonado. Costume design by Anita Yavich. Lighting design by Lap Chi Chu. Sound design and original music by Caroline Eng and Kate Marvin. Projection design by Yee Eun Nam. Voice coach Patrick Mulryan.
Hwang may be best known for his Tony-winning M. Butterfly, which ran for nearly two years on Broadway between 1988 and 1990, but his extensive résumé includes nearly two dozen plays, books for musicals, and libretti for opera. For my money, though, it's hard to beat two of his works in which a character, coincidentally named David Henry Hwang, generously skewers himself along with everyone else around him. One of these is Soft Power from 2019, a gleeful musical comedy on which Hwang collaborated with composer Jeanine Tesori. It is a totally off-the-wall fantasy about, among other things, the 2016 Presidential election, the proliferation of gun ownership, and the obliviousness of Americans about the values and belief systems of other nations. But what really strikes home is the thing that got his creative juices flowing in the first place. The inspiration for Soft Power was a disturbing incident in which Hwang was stabbed in the neck by an unknown assailant, sustaining a wound that hospitalized him for several days. Who among us would have thought to turn that incident into a wild and crazy show featuring Hillary Clinton as the star of a musical based on The King and I? Yellow Face predates Soft Power by a dozen years. Both shows appeared at the Public Theater and both were directed by Leigh Silverman, who is back on board with this Broadway production, a smart move given her skillful handling of both the comic and more serious side of Hwang's work. In the case of Yellow Face, the incident that triggered the writing had to do with a protest in which Hwang was initially deeply involved. It had to do with the casting of Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce in the role of the Engineer in Miss Saigon, an example of a white actor portraying an Asian character (hence "yellow face"). Hwang and many others fought against allowing Pryce to play the part when the musical came to the U.S. after a successful run in London. A big brouhaha ensued, but in the end, Pryce was in and Hwang and his colleagues had to settle for the actor eschewing skin-coloring makeup. Or at least that's how Hwang tells it in Yellow Face. More significantly, at least in terms of Yellow Face, is the fact that Hwang actually wrote another play in response to the tempest over Pryce. It was called Face Value, though few have seen it since its entire Broadway run consisted of eight previews, closing before it even opened. Still, no one turns lemons into lemonade quite like David Henry Hwang, and thus was planted the seed for Yellow Face, in which the failure of Face Value is a key element.
But the biggest joke lands on himself when, after the kerfuffle over Jonathan Pryce and Miss Saigon, he backs away from fighting on behalf of the Asian American community, choosing to focus on expressing his views through his writing. Unintentionally, he winds up enlisting a white actor (Ryan Eggold, displaying a laidback insouciant charm) to star as an Asian character in Face Value. Some very funny events unfold as Hwang tries to wriggle out of, or at least cover up, that oopsie moment, such as passing off the actor, whose name is Marcus G. Dahlman, as a part-Asian "Siberian Jew" whom he dubs "Marcus Gee." Like a bad penny or, possibly, a good luck charm, Marcus continues to cross paths with Hwang even after the collapse of Face Value, having adopted his new persona almost like a religious convert might embrace an adopted faith. It is Marcus who becomes an active voice within the Asian American community while Hwang, alone and short of cash, settles for taking a job at the bank run by his father (Francis Jue, terrific as always) just as a Congressional investigation is beginning the probe into financial dealings between Chinese American banks and China itself. Think McCarthyism. Suddenly, things are not so funny anymore, and, undoubtedly, some in the audience will find this shift in tone to be too abrupt (and, yes, the balance is a bit off). But Hwang (the playwright if not the character) has some big questions on his mind, and he wants us to leave with something more to think about than the laughs. First, what does it mean to be a member of a community, and what do you owe to that community, especially if you became a member by virtue of being born into it? And second, what does it mean to be an ally to that community, either as an outsider or, in a more hopeful way, as an honorary member? Don't discount the humor, but these are the kinds of questions we are invited to leave with and what makes Yellow Face a significant work in these divisive times.
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