“Tony Award ® winner and three-time Pulitzer finalist David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) will make his Roundabout debut with the Broadway premiere of Yellow Face, his hilarious is-he-or-isn’t-he comedy of identity, show business, and (perhaps) autobiography. Starring Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) and directed by Tony nominee Leigh Silverman (Violet).
In this play inspired by real events, the playwright’s fictionalized doppelgänger protests yellowface casting in Miss Saigon, only to mistakenly cast a white actor as the Asian lead in his own play. This Obie Award-winning and Pulitzer finalist play is a laugh-out-loud farce about the complexities of race.”
The particulars, here, are fictionalized, but the sense we get of DHH’s failure to meet the expectations he’s set for himself in taking on a contentious issue is painful and real. Kim excels in performing DHH’s hubristic pride at his own accomplishments and then his scrambling, desperate desire to keep things aloft; Eggold, a discovery for this audience member, conjures actorly vanity and obliviousness to pitch-perfect effect. Braided throughout is a sense of just how much is at stake for DHH, as his father, who rose from modest beginnings as a Chinese immigrant to become a millionaire banker, insists upon his son manifesting his own destiny. (As played by Francis Jue, this character, named HYH after the late Henry Y. Hwang, is a comic jolt, all aphorisms about the greatness of America and his own unrelenting self-belief.)
I don’t remember feeling the weight of that insight, or for that matter, the levity of the jokes, when I saw the 2007 production. Part of the improvement in this revival is, no doubt, the result of cuts, fine-tuning and rewritten scenes. The elimination of the intermission helps too; the two halves of the story don’t separate like a sauce. And there’s something to be said for the way a Broadway house, when a solid play is sized up to suit it, responds by giving it space to breathe.
| 2007 | Off-Broadway |
Original Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
| 2024 | Broadway |
Roundabout Theatre Company Broadway Premiere Production Broadway |
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Performer in a Broadway Play | Francis Jue |
| 2025 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | Yellow Face |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play | Francis Jue |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Daniel Dae Kim |
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