“Tony Award ® winner and three-time Pulitzer finalist David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) will make his Roundabout debut with the Broadway premiere of Yellow Face, his hilarious is-he-or-isn’t-he comedy of identity, show business, and (perhaps) autobiography. Starring Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) and directed by Tony nominee Leigh Silverman (Violet).
In this play inspired by real events, the playwright’s fictionalized doppelgänger protests yellowface casting in Miss Saigon, only to mistakenly cast a white actor as the Asian lead in his own play. This Obie Award-winning and Pulitzer finalist play is a laugh-out-loud farce about the complexities of race.”
No, there is no direct connection. Yes, “Yellow Face” is specific to the Asian-American experience, and much of it (the first two-thirds) happens just within the theater world. But the misunderstanding, hate, fear, suspicion, and outrage surrounding issues of identity seem to have taken center stage in this country. This might well make audiences find new relevance in Hwang’s comedy, which is opening tonight at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theater. Mixing fact with fantasy, “Yellow Face” is as thoughtful as it is playful, not the self-indulgent autobiography that “DHH” himself calls it in the play itself – one of its many mischievous meta-theatrical touches.
This closing cavalcade of gotchas somewhat dilutes the potency of what has gone before. But perhaps the real power Yellow Face proposes is of minority voices not just delivering sober-minded rebuttals to bigotry, but—in occupying spaces like a Broadway theater—offering those rebuttals with irreverent humor and pointed swagger while playing with audiences’ perceptions and expectations as freely as possible.
2007 | Off-Broadway |
Original Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
2024 | Broadway |
Roundabout Theatre Company Broadway Premiere Production Broadway |
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