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.
In Broadway's new production of M. Butterfly, Clive Owen brings London stage chops and matinee idol polish to the play's conflicted protagonist and semi-reliable narrator, Rene Gallimard, a French diplomat in love with a Chinese opera singer who turns out to be a spy. It is a role that accommodates varying levels of power and pathos - John Lithgow was Broadway's first Gallimard in 1988; he was followed by Anthony Hopkins, Tony Randall and, in David Cronenberg's 1993 film, Jeremy Irons. But, as crucial as it is to have a compelling presence like Owen as the play's lead storyteller, success here hinges on pinning the right Butterfly: Song Liling is a Chinese man claiming to Gallimard - even in bed - to be a woman, one who lives publicly as a man and performs female roles (as male singers did in traditional Chinese opera).
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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