M. BUTTERFLY To Receive World Premiere Musical Adaptation in Seoul This Fall
The Tony-winning play gets its first musical adaptation, running September 22 through December 13 at Yes24 Stage Hall 1 in Seoul.
David Henry Hwang's Tony Award-winning play M. Butterfly is being adapted into a musical for the first time, with a Seoul production running September 22 through December 13 at Yes24 Stage Hall 1 in the Daehak-ro theatre district. The news was first reported by Asia Business Daily.
Theater Yeoljeon, the Korean production company behind the adaptation, announced the staging this week. The company has a long history with the material, having first brought M. Butterfly to Korean audiences as a play in 2012 and mounted it five times through 2024, making it one of its signature titles.
Hwang's play is based on the true story of French diplomat Bernard Boursicot, dramatized as Rene Gallimard, who carried on a nearly 20-year relationship with a Peking opera performer specializing in female roles, unaware that his lover, Song Liling, was both a man and a spy for the Chinese government. Set against the Cultural Revolution, the play refracts the affair through Puccini's Madama Butterfly, casting Gallimard as a self-styled Pinkerton projecting fantasies of Eastern submission onto a partner who is quietly running the entire performance.
M. Butterfly premiered in Washington, D.C. in 1988 and transferred to Broadway's Eugene O'Neill Theatre the same year, running 777 performances through January 1990. It won the 1988 Tony Award for Best Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play, and was a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist the following year. David Cronenberg's 1993 film adaptation starred Jeremy Irons and John Lone.
The musical version pushes the Puccini opera further into the foreground as an explicit play-within-a-play, using it as a symbolic frame that inverts as Rene and Song's dynamic unravels. The role of Pinkerton, largely conceptual in the play, has been expanded into a performing part.
Kim Minjung, whose credits include the musical The Tale of April Fools and the play Silent Sky, directs. Jung Eunbi (Wiedershtand, The Red Garden) has written the book and lyrics, with music by composer Namgoong Yujin (Williams and the Williams' Williamses, Artis).
Rene Gallimard will be played by Joo Minjin, An Jaeyoung, and Yoo Hyunseok in rotation. Song Liling will be played by Kim Bada, Yoo Taeyul, and Hong Gibum. Hwang Manik and Kim Seungyong share the role of Toulon, Rene's superior. Jang Jaewoong and Nam Minwoo play the expanded Pinkerton. An Sang-eun and Jeon Hayoung, who won Best Newcomer at the 9th Korea Musical Awards, each take dual roles as Rene's wife Agnes and as Qin, a Chinese Communist Party official.
