OnStage: Mockery is the medium

Playwright David Henry Hwang satirizes himself and cultural identities in "Yellow Face."

By ROHAN PRESTON, Star Tribune

Last update: February 4, 2010 - 10:19 PM

When "Miss Saigon" transferred from London to Broadway in 1991, it was met with protests by Asian-American activists because white actors were playing Asian characters in two of the principal male roles. Eminent playwright David Henry Hwang was among those who objected to the casting of "Saigon."

Now Hwang has crafted a play that deals with some of the questions raised by that episode and also features a character named David Hwang who does things the author decries.

In "Yellow Face," which opens Saturday at the Guthrie Theater in a Mu Performing Arts production, the playwright has written a character who chooses a white man, Marcus, to play an Asian lead in a play called "Face Value."

The character, David, tries to pass Marcus off as Eurasian, albeit a far-fetched one (a Siberian Jew). By the time Marcus' true ancestry becomes clear to all, David and his backers are too deep in the production to turn back. They have spent $2 million on "Face Value" and Marcus, believing that he is actually Asian, has become an impassioned activist for Asian rights, even as others see him as an "ethnic tourist."

"Part of the fun of the play is that it's kind of a mockumentary," Hwang said in an interview last week. While incorporating elements of the "Miss Saigon" controversy, he said, "the play is trying to have fun with the thin line between fiction and imagination. It's partly a struggle between artistic freedom and these pernicious archetypes."

Theater review: Mu's 'Yellow Face' tackles important themes, but sags under self-importance
By Quinton Skinner
Special to the Pioneer Press
Updated: 02/08/2010 11:31:58 AM CST

Randy Reyes is David Henry Hwang and Matt Rein is Marcus G. Dahlman in Mu Performing Arts' production of "Yellow Fafce." (Courtesy: Stephen Geffre)
Deep into the second act of David Henry Hwang's autobiographical play "Yellow Face," the actor Randy Reyes, playing Hwang, scoffs at the notion of the playwright naming a character after himself on the grounds of unthinkable self-indulgence.

We laugh along with this attempt at defusing such charges, though after absorbing the whole of the work it is not unfair to conclude that Hwang has let himself off too easily.

The narrative concerns a period in the 1990s, when Hwang's public protest over the casting of a Caucasian performer for an Asian role in a Broadway production of "Miss Saigon" caused a firestorm. The legitimacy of Hwang's stance was bolstered by decades of precedent (the "yellow face" of the title donned by actors from Mickey Rooney to David Carradine), but an unfortunate side effect was Hwang's own typecasting as (in his own words) the "poster child for political correctness."

On the heels of this ambivalent experience, Hwang then has himself gulled into believing that the white actor Marcus (Matt Rein) is Asian when he casts him in a new play (Marcus fails to clear up the matter). When the nature of his error finally dawns on him, Hwang goes into cover-up mode, protective of his own career as well as the millions invested in the (doomed) production.

David Henry Hwang's sendup of himself and the stereotypes that imprison Asian-Americans is smart, sharp and revealing.

"Free your mind and the rest will follow. Be color-blind; don't be so shallow."

That cleaned-up Funkadelic refrain is one of the many slogans that flash by with the speed of a Super Bowl ad in "Yellow Face," David Henry Hwang's sharp and sometimes bracing sendup of himself and the stereotypes that imprison Asian-Americans.

The comedy, which opened Saturday in a Mu Performing Arts production at the Guthrie Theater, is smart, funny and ultimately revelatory, even if it packs a bit too much in its script.

"Yellow Face" uses humor as a blade, cutting to the quick of some of the most enduring archetypes that bedevil Asian-Americans.

The complicated plot, partly based on actual events, includes scenes of plays within a play, congressional testimonies and reporters' coverage of controversies. In the early 1990s, a playwright named David Hwang (get it?), who is played by Randy Reyes, leads the charge against the casting of a white actor to play a major Asian character when the blockbuster musical "Miss Saigon" arrives on Broadway.

His battle, captured in newspaper clippings read by an announcer, is ultimately unsuccessful, but he seems to be true to his cause. After the protests, David has an urgent need to find a lead actor for his own play. He ends up with a white actor to play the lead Asian role.

The playwright and the actor have a falling-out -- the play is a failure -- but the actor goes on to become a successful interpreter of Asian parts. More than that, he becomes an advocate for Asian-American causes.

Missed opportunities mark 'Yellow Face'
By Ed Huyck | Published Mon, Feb 8 2010 10:07 am
Midway through the first act of "Yellow Face," playwright David Henry Hwang pokes fun at the overheated, on the noise, political pontifications you often hear in the theater. Then, for much of the second act, he engages in much of the same in this frustrating, tale-of-two-plays new work, which is receiving its Midwest premiere from Mu Performing Arts.
The elements are all in place. Hwang is perfectly poised to write about race in America from an Asian-American perspective. Mu has assembled a terrific cast. And the production at the Guthrie's Dowling Studio crackles with energy under the direction of Rick Shiomi.
And for the first act, the piece flies. The autobiographical piece follows the playwright from the protests over the casting of Welsh actor Jonathan Price as the Engineer in the Broadway production of "Miss Saigon" to his first attempt to craft a response, "Face Value."
Here, Hwang starts to twist reality by introducing Marcus, a young white actor, who in a series of modern farcical mix-ups ends up cast as the Asian lead in "Face Value." To save his reputation, Hwang crafts a cover story for Marcus, who in turn takes it and runs, becoming a strong spokesman for the Asian-American community.
The problems come up when the Marcus character disappears for long stretches of act two, as Hwang turns to a series of congressional investigations and accusations of spying that ripped through the Chinese-American community in the 1990s. It's strong material for a play, but it sits uncomfortably with where Hwang had gone in the first half of the play. It also leaves aside the subtle touches that marked the earlier sections for a pure polemic. Great for a letter to the editor, not so much for a play.

Yellow Face, a Theatre Mu Production at The Guthrie Theater on 2/7/10
By: John Olive

David Henry Hwang calls the question very early in Yellow Face (produced by the always worthwhile Theatre Mu in the Guthrie's Dowling Studio, through Feb 21, guthrietheater.org): "Is race a meaningless construct?" Who, the play asks, is more authentically Chinese? The successful American whose Chinese ancestry is impeccable or the white man who travels to China and spends months in a small village, surrounding himself with the rich language and culture? Indeed, what is ethnicity? The way we look? Allegiance to a country? Politics? Does it come down to, simply, what we believe about ourselves? But what about the beliefs of the people who look at us?

This is a complicated and hugely important question here in the age of Obama and without providing us with easy answers (an impossibility), Hwang asks it often and in many ways. This fascinating play struts and frets, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a radical melodrama, sometimes proceeding with Living Newspaper theatricality. The major character is David Henry Hwang (called DHH). Initially, the play deals with the Miss Saigon controversy (in which the producer chose to cast a white actor as a Vietnamese) and then with DHH's unwitting (or is it?) use of a white actor as the lead in his Face Value. His reaction to the disturbing implication of this becomes increasingly hysterical. Rather less successfully, the play deals with the Wen Ho Lee controversy (the Chinese scientist falsely, as it turned out, accused of espionage), with cynical GOP politicians questioning the provenance of political donations. A rich, sprawling play. Self-referential (obviously) but also smart and passionate and probing. Hwang's dramaturgical instincts are excellent and the piece moves forward with assurance.

THEATER | Mu Performing Arts bring Hwang's "Yellow Face" to the Guthrie

BY SHEILA REGAN, TC DAILY PLANET
February 07, 2010
David Henry Hwang, who wrote the Tony Award winning M. Butterfly, which satirizes the famous Puccini opera Madame Butterfly, now takes on that opera's remake. Mu Performing Arts' Yellow Face, now playing at the Guthrie's Dowling Studio, is set at the time that Asian-Americans were protesting the casting decisions for Miss Saigon, which is based on Madame Butterfly.

Miss Saigon opened in London in 1989, and, like Madame Butterfly, involves an Asian woman who falls in love with a white soldier and kills herself so that he can take the child home with him to give it a better life. (In Miss Saigon, the Asian woman is Vietnamese and the soldier is American.) When the London production transferred to the United States, the Actor's Equity Association refused to allow Jonathan Pryce, a white actor, to reprise his role of the Engineer, a character of European and Asian descent. After much controversy, the play did finally open in New York with Pryce playing his original role.

The main character in Yellow Face is David Henry Hwang himself, and with humility and self-deprecation Hwang creates a character who at first openly protests the Miss Saigon casting and later decides he doesn't want to be vocal against it (to protect his reputation), and eventually accidentally casts a white actor in an Asian role for his new play Face Value, "a backstage farce of mistaken racial identity." Fiction and truth interweave in Hwang's depiction of himself, and often it's unclear when Hwang is poking fun of himself for things that actually happened and when he is embellishing the story to prove a point.

yellow face, playing through february 21 at the guthrie theater. for tickets ($18-$30) and information, see guthrietheater.org.