What could be more fun than a play about racism? If didactic screeds, holier-than-thou judgments, or self-congratulatory flakiness are what you imagine you’ll find in such an evening then you’ll no doubt be surprised by ReAct Theatre’s production of David Henry Hwang’s Yellowface (through July 29 at the Center House Theatre; tickets: $6 – $15). This intelligent play is a light comedy touched with sentiment and centered on perceptions of race and racism—yes, it’s a light comedy. In fact it’s downright hilarious.
Hwang has called Yellowface his attempt to fix his 1993 Broadway flop, Face Value, by means of a mockumentary, and it covers the mockery side of that portmanteau insistently. The script is self-deprecating to say the least, yet it feels narcissistic in its very self-deprecation. That narcissism can become a single note for Hwang’s stand-in—listed as DHH—and Moses Yin plays the character directly into the pitfall.
The satirical history begins with the actual event of Hwang’s protest against the casting of Jonathan Pryce, a white actor, as a prominent Asian character in the original productions (London and then New York) of Miss Saigon. Things go off the tracks when DHH assembles a cast for the pre-Broadway run of Face Value, which was written in response to the Jonathan Pryce kerfuffle. In the play’s largest and most important leap from both fact and plausibility DHH convinces himself that Marcus G. Dahlman (an excellent—and very white-looking—Mark Tyler Miller) is a Eurasian actor. Though he realizes and attempts to fix his mistake before the show goes into previews on Broadway (where it closed before opening) the damage has been done.
Among the significant casualties of DHH’s ludicrous face-saving fabrications is Marcus’s own sense of identity. Having achieved success as an Asian actor Marcus claims and capitalizes on his new-found Asian identity. Subplots involving Hwang’s personal life twist around this situation and all comes to a kind of self-conscious happy ending.
The play and production are at their best when they deal with matters of the human heart outside of Hwang’s self-perception, especially in DHH’s relationship with his father, HYH. Henry Vu takes a glancing blow at caricature on his way to a well-connected and heart-felt embodiment of HYH, which makes up for poor performances in most of his other roles.
Hwang’s script lovingly delineates the legacy of delusional grandeur among other qualities that link father and son and beautifully inlays that bond at the core of their divisions. HYH and DHH are equally ambitious dreamers with a weakness for show. For DHH these qualities are combined in his work. HYH focuses his ambition on his business but panache continually sneaks in. He runs a bank in emulation of his Hollywood heroes and his motto is the half-sung refrain “My Way” (via Frank Sinatra).
Director David Hsieh keeps up with the breakneck pace of Hwang’s script, which is all to the good. Quick scenes keep us from lingering on often two-dimensional acting. Overall production values are simple, which largely serves the show though there is a palpable gap between funding and vision. The use of slides in the design is distractingly inconsistent but often useful, serving as a kind of mask for the barely differentiated characterizations that liberally pepper the play. Jeremy R. Behrens is notable in these roles more for winning commitment than nuance or specificity.
The slide-as-mask is fitting for a show about faces concealed and revealed, personal and societal. There is a risky suggestion in Yellowface of an association between Hwang’s self-absorption and the phenomena of racist perception. Clearly Hwang feels there is a problem with anti-Asian discrimination but he is also highly critical of the ways in which the Asian community (and by suggested extension all minority communities) perceive and respond to discrimination. That he makes this suggestion in a light, sentimental comedy shows how much Hwang has learned of the value of masks since Face Value. It also suggests the danger and truth of the observation. Comedy is the mask that shields us from the risks of Yellowface.
