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.
Spectacle and director Julie Taymor go together; in the case of The Lion King, award-winningly, and in the case of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, with its litany of injuries and controversies, notoriously. Comparative restraint thrums through her vision for David Henry Hwang's Tony Award-winning M. Butterfly, first produced as a play in 1988, made into a movie in 1993, and now back on Broadway. This re-invisioning of Madame Butterfly, with boundaries of gender and sexuality blurred, is subtly drawn, and not made for superheroes leaping from balconies.
Physically and cerebrally Clive Owen has the chameleonic qualities that define a certain kind of star charisma: He's handsome but not pretty; suave in a way that practically advertises insecurity; glib yet always on alert for the surgical riposte. All of which make the Knick star perfect for the role of Rene Gallimard, the French diplomat who falls in love with a Chinese opera star, in David Henry Hwang's electrifying drama M. Butterfly.
| 1988 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 2017 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
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