NEW YORK — Back in 1990, the playwright David Henry Hwang protested a decision by the British theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh to bring Jonathan Pryce, the widely admired British star of his hit London musical “Miss Saigon,” to Broadway. Pryce played a weirdly nonspecific Asian character called the Engineer and makeup was employed to alter Pryce’s white features. Hwang, who had already scored a hit with “M. Butterfly,” argued this casting was unacceptable. Period.
A huge contretemps, a fight I well remember, ensued. On one side was racial authenticity, or the lack thereof in this case, and the denial of opportunity to Asian American actors, historically confined to minor roles on Broadway, if they got any role at all. On the other was the argument that this was clearly a slippery slope. Did this mean actors always had to be gay to play a gay character? Jewish to play a Jewish hero? What about mixed-race performers? Was it about how people appeared or identified, or about the race of their parents?
And, at an audition, how could you even know for sure who was what? Federal laws intended to prevent racial discrimination made it illegal to ask.
At the time, most outsiders and even liberal theater critics sided with the producers. My, how the world has changed. And, in this matter, mostly for the better.
Hwang’s semi-autobiographical play, “Yellow Face,” new on Broadway by Roundabout Theatre Company, actually premiered some 17 years ago in Los Angeles, also under the solid direction of Leigh Silverman. Naming real names, most of whom still are very much around, the 100-minute show looks back at this 34-year-old affair, focusing on the discomfort the author felt at being caught between fighting what he saw as oblivious racism and being perceived as standing on the wrong side of artistic freedom. The vexing situation was exacerbated by the producer’s declaration that without Pryce’s star power and skills, he would choose to cancel the show. Hwang quickly found himself in the position of potentially putting the many Asian American actors who had been cast in this large Broadway company out of work.
On some levels, “Yellow Face” is inside-Broadway baseball, most interesting to those who follow issues that tend to engage only a subset of highly educated Americans and/or those who work in the cultural fields. That said, we quickly forget that “Miss Saigon” was a populist phenomenon back in the day and made front-page news. And what makes this an enjoyable play, and different from most of the other dramas built around racial identity, is that “Yellow Face” is (mostly) a comedy and Hwang, who is amusingly played in the show by the witty actor Daniel Dae Kim (“Lost”), is willing to poke fun at himself.
Weird as it may sound, “Yellow Face” is a good time in the company of smart, self-aware people, critical thinkers willing to ponder the lessons and the follies of the past.
Here’s the nub: Hwang was himself working on a play when the “Miss Saigon” business hit and he, too, needed to find an Asian American actor shortly afterwards He thinks he has one but then he’s not so sure. What if the guy (here dryly played by Ryan Eggold) really is white? What even is a white guy, anyway? Or someone of Asian descent? Isn’t “Asian,” from the name of a continent that contains myriad identities, an absurdly reductionist term in the first place?
A blend of fact and fiction, “Yellow Face” is an admirably self-aware work and instead of simply ignoring the baked-in contradictions of its central dilemma, it explores its limits.
Plus, there is an additional rub. Hwang is the son of the Shanghai-born Henry Yuan Hwang (played with palpable joy by Francis Jue), the founder of the Far East National Bank, the first federally chartered Chinese-American bank. The elder Hwang, a registered Republican, was hugely successful in his adopted home and he drew his playwright son into the bank, even as it attracted investigatory attention for its ties to politicians and China itself.
“Yellow Face” notes that even as the son built a creative career by focusing on the U.S. and European habit of either fetishizing or feminizing Asian nations, his own immigrant father was so patriotic that he put “I Love U.S.A.” on the frame of his license plate as he made his Stateside fortune.
Did the U.S. treat either of these two remarkable men fairly? That’s complicated, like much else in “Yellow Face.”
At the Todd Haimes Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St., New York; www.roundabouttheatre.org
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
