“Yellow Face,” which is now performing at Boston’s Lyric Stage Theater on Clarendon Street, was written some 17 years ago. But in many ways, it’s just now fully enjoying the spotlight. The play, by award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang, will mark its Broadway premiere starring Daniel Dae Kim this fall and an Audible version is currently available.
“Issues that are at the center of it, issues like representation and appropriation and whitewashing and casting, they were still relatively obscure issues in 2007,” Hwang told the Sampan recently. “That is, they weren’t really as much part of the mainstream discussion.”
Fast forward to today, he said, and these issues “have become part of the mainstream discussion.”
Hwang is best known for his play, “M. Butterfly” and is prolific in theater, musicals, opera, and television. The semi-autobiographical “Yellow Face” spans a period in an alternate version of the 1990s, when the narrator DHH, who is a playwright, tells a lie about the race of an actor that he cast in his new production, and this lie then gets repeated dozens of times by different people as if it were the truth. DHH is committed to getting justice and equity for Asians in the theater world, and the lie threatens to unravel that work.
“In a way, the play is funnier (today in 2024), because audiences are more familiar now with what does it mean for DHH to accidentally cast the white guy as an Asian and now is trying to cover it up? That was a more esoteric idea in 2007 than it is now,” said Hwang.
As he spoke with Sampan, Hwang discussed his plans to see the Boston production during its run and his feelings about watching his own work.
“I tend not to enjoy watching my own work unless it’s in previews, and I can still change things. I think I’m used to a rehearsal process where I change a lot of stuff in the text during rehearsal, and then we go into previews, and I usually change a fair amount more. I’m kind of big on rewriting. But as a result, once the show is frozen and I can’t make any more changes, it’s a little harder for me to watch, because I still notice things that I could change, but I now no longer have the ability to do that.”
He added that seeing the artistic choices made by directors is one of the reasons he is a playwright. “I love the collaboration process, and I really enjoy the different kinds of interpretations and varied ways to manifest a story physically that directors are able to bring to the process. Occasionally I see an interpretation that I don’t know that I agree with or a lot of times it may not be what I thought of initially, but I usually like it. Occasionally I see something that’s different. I’m like, ‘I don’t really know about that’, it’s still thrilling to me that somebody and a whole company of creative people, as well as a theater in most cases, decided to put to do the show and that this is another way of looking at it, even if it’s not one that I personally would agree with. In some sense, the play becomes its own thing after it goes into the world. If you think of plays as children there’s some things that my kid might do that I don’t agree with. But they’re adults and it’s kind of impressive that they can make these choices.”
The Lyric Stage theater is an intimate space to host “Yellow Face,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 2008 and won an Obie playwriting award. With three tiers of seats arranged around the three sides of the wooden-floored stage, there is a recess at the far side of the stage which had been made to look like a dressing room with 5 bulb-ringed mirrors and a chair set up at each station. A giant, broken picture frame ringed half the stage, framing the silhouette of a face on the back wall. Sitting near the front of the stage was a small desk with a dated-looking rolling chair draped with a jacket. On the desk sat a typewriter next to an older model phone cradled in its bulky receiver.
Six actors are in this production of “Yellow Face” with four of them portraying a multitude of characters. The four actors playing multiple roles rose to the challenge admirably when the Sampan watched the show this month. Aside from a couple of momentarily forgotten lines that caused the flow of the production to sputter briefly, the scenes flowed smoothly and to great effect. Standout performances included those by Jenny S. Lee as Jane Krakowski, who showed incredible range, and J.B. Barricklo for his moving portrayal of DHH’s father, HYH; Jupiter Lê was easy to hate as NWOAOC (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) and Mei MacQuarrie was fantastically believable as Leah Anne Cho.
DHH, shone as the playwright who found himself in a difficult position, was the narrator and the heartbeat of the production. Michael Hisamoto played the role to perfection with excellent physical comedy and perfect comedic timing. His acting range was not limited to comedy, on more than one occasion he cried actual tears and the audience wept along with him because he had done such a thorough job of winning them over to DHH’s side. When DHH told his big lie, members of the audience gasped audibly and continued tutting through the rest of the scene, showing how invested they were in DHH as a character thanks to the superb writing and skillful acting. Actress Jenny S. Lee aptly described the production as “an elaborate dance around DHH.”
Alexander Holden gave a fantastic performance as Marcus G. Dahlman. His acting was informed by his sense of humor and carried scenes that might have felt a bit stilted in less capable hands. Holden has a distinct voice with a lovely timbre that was meant to be projected on stage.
This production relied on costuming and set design to remind the audience that it was set in the past. A well-placed braided belt, a subtle pair of sensible shoes, the switch from a typewriter on the desk to a clunky laptop—these small details anchored the play in the 1990s without being over the top in the way period pieces set in the ’90s sometimes fails. The background actors doubled as stagehands moving furniture between scenes in a very deliberate and ritualistic way while wearing black robes. Director Ted Hewlett explained during the question and answer period after the play that they are meant to be reminiscent of the garb worn by kuroko (Japanese stagehands) and were a deliberate mix of cultures.
Hewlett, as director, rose to the occasion and proved himself a capable leader with a talent for including realistic physicality and conveying a complex story in an easily comprehended narrative. He used cleverly placed projectors to enhance the set design and trusted his actors to swiftly switch characters, yet still gave space within the play to build an emotional resonance with the audience.
The Lyric Stage production of “Yellow Face” is a wonderful example of how moving and relevant theater can be when the script, the actors, and the direction come together in just the right way.
But it was also poignant. As Hwang further explained about the show’s relevance today:
“The other reason that I think ‘Yellow Face’ has become quite timely is a much sadder one, which is the spike in anti-Asian racism that we have experienced in hate and attacks and everything since the pandemic. It makes audiences aware of the continued prevalence of anti-Asian racism and the degree to which we are regarded as Asian Americans, has always historically been a function of the United States relationship with some root culture Asian country. Whether we talk about Japanese Americans being interned during World War Two, or Vincent Chin getting murdered in the (1980s), because of fears of the rise of Japan, or South Asians and Muslims being targeted for hate after 9/11. We saw this yet again during the pandemic and Covid being referred to as the ‘China virus’ or ‘kung flu’ and sparking a series of attacks against Asian Americans. I think it was easier in 2007 for at least non-Asians to kind of indulge the stereotype that Asian Americans aren’t affected by racism. And it is much harder for non-Asians to say that now. As a result, some of the issues in the play, particularly those around targeting my father and Wen Ho Lee in the nineties, I think those feel more timely, unfortunately.”
Yellow Face runs until June 23 at the Lyric Stage Theater in Boston.
