David Henry Hwang's modern classic, M. BUTTERFLY charts the scandalous romance between a married French diplomat and a mysterious Chinese opera singer - a remarkable love story of international espionage and personal betrayal. Their 20-year relationship pushed and blurred the boundaries between male and female, east and west - while redefining the nature of love and the devastating cost of deceit.
Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe Award winner Clive Owen will star as Rene Gallimard in the first Broadway revival of David Henry Hwang's Tony Award-winning play, M. BUTTERFLY, directed by Tony Award winner Julie Taymor.
For the Tony Award-winning play's first Broadway return, Hwang will introduce new material inspired by the real-life love affair between French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu that has come to light since the play's 1988 premiere.
'The Lion King' has secured Julie Taymor's status as a director with style and vision. But her work here is short on passion and inspiration. Awkward sliding panels, which dominate the set design, add to the choppiness of the play. Scenes from operas add pageantry but mostly feel like padding. On the other hand, the drama also omits details. That includes what the initial attraction is for Gallimard when he thinks Song is a man. The fluidity of gender is certainly topical today, but the question of how Song carried on the gender-bending ruse for so long remains unanswered. Song's anatomically explicit courtroom testimony of the mechanics of his duplicity still leaves questions. Basically it comes down to that people see what they need to see.
Most theater is a seduction. Bodies and lights, words and clothes, they all tempt us to embrace what's unreal. David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, now revived on Broadway, starring Clive Owen, is a play that uses the tools of theater to both celebrate and question how we give ourselves over to fantasy. Nearly 30 years on, it's still clever, tender and formally daring. But Julie Taymor's staging and Hwang's rewrites unbalance the delicate poise between illusion and truth.
1988 | Broadway |
Broadway |
2017 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
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