Daniel Dae Kim (Photo: Joan Marcus)

 

Yellow Face

 

By Julia Polinsky

 

Part backstage comedy, part political satire, part based in fact and part pure fiction, David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face is by turns hilarious, touching, and disturbing. It's been suggested that we might appreciate the gift to see ourselves as other see us. But we might not. Yellow Face pokes hard at identity politics, as it examines whether what we look like is -- or isn't -- our real life. 

 

Hwang puts himself, as DHH, in the center of Yellow Face, starting with his protest against casting the non-Asian actor Jonathan Pryce as a Eurasian in Miss Saigon. Casting non-Asian actors in Asian roles on stage and screen is called "yellowface" and Pryce is a high-profile example that's just too big to ignore. DHH writes his protest letter; the community is up in arms; commercial pressures bear down, and Pryce is cast.

 

DHH flounders through the consequences to himself and his career - spoiler: not good - then writes his next play in response, Face Values. Up to here, art has imitated life, but here is where fiction takes over. In the process of finding a star for Face Values, DHH somehow champions hiring the clearly non-Asian Marcus G. Dahlman (Ryan Eggold) as an Asian man. (The phrase, "but does he look Asian?" gets thrown around a lot.)

 

DHH, desperate for a lead actor, twists himself in knots, making up a backstory for Marcus that makes him Asian because he's a Siberian Jew and Siberia is in Asia. Bizarrely, Marcus embraces his newfound Asian-ness, even shortening his name to Marcus Gee, and runs with it, even when DHH essentially fires him. (Although Hwang won the Tony for previous play, M Butterfly, Face Values is a famous flop - the catchiest critique of it calls it "M Turkey.")

 

Daniel Dae Kim, Ryan Eggold, Marinda Anderson (Photo: Joan Marcus)

 

The conversation shifts to DHH's father, HYH (Francis Jue, in a brilliant performance). HYH is a successful Chinese immigrant banker, who gets caught in a government investigation of Chinese espionage. HYH speaks movingly of coming to America because that's where he knew he belonged; he wanted to be American. HYH explains his deep love for America and how it shaped his identity - for better and, eventually, for much worse. Once the Senate investigation is done with him, he's crushed. Hwang also writes about the Chinese immigrant scientist Wen Ho Lee (also Francis Jue), who was himself the target of espionage investigations, with disastrous consequences, a clear parallel with HYH.

 

Francis Jue, Daniel Dae Kim (Photo: Joan Marcus)

 

The powerful, versatile, endlessly appealing Daniel Dae Kim does a splendid turn as DHH. Kim has a mobile, expressive face, lovely timing and considerable star power. Backing up this splendid performance, the multi-racial ensemble plays multiple roles, often against race and gender, which gets a little surreal, sometimes. Women play men; people of color play white; white plays, well, Asian, and so on. The irony of aggressively colorblind casting in a play about yellowface: well, that's post-modern meta to the nth degree.

 

Leigh Silverman's direction, teamed with spare, elegant scenic design from Arnulfo Maldonado, rescue Yellow Face from being a straight lecture. Yee Eun Nam provides the excellent projections; evocative lighting design is by Lap Chi Chu. Anita Yavich's costume design is spot on.

 

There's a lot of talking to the audience, because the basic format of Yellow Face is, basically, docudrama. In this play, Hwang mostly tells, rather than shows; Yellow Face is very talky. But it's great, revealing talk; Hwang knows that what we say changes everything as much as what we look like. Some of that talk is the shallow, knee-jerk language of self-righteous college students. Some is the skin-deep banalities of politicians, reporters, and theater people. Yet some is the sincere, touching outpourings of HYH, DHH's Chinese immigrant father.  

 

Francis Jue, Marinda Anderson, Kevin Del Aguila, Daniel Dae Kim, Ryan Eggold, Shannon Tyo (Photo: Joan Marcus)

 

In Yellow Face, DHH says that years ago, he'd discovered a face that he could wear to become fully alive, but as the years went by, that face became his mask. Hwang has amusingly, devastatingly stripped away any illusion DHH may have had, in theater or out of it.

 

Yellow Face

At the Todd Haimes Theatre

227 W. 42^nd St, New York

Through November 24