Fresh from an award-winning two-month run in San Francisco, Yellow Face comes to L.A. with several of its original cast members and director Rob Zimmerman attached. It’s a good thing, too, as it makes for a production which moves snappily and smoothly over its 2 ½-hour length, drawing laughs almost every step of the way. The expertise is reflected in the script as well, which is the work of the esteemed playwright David Henry Hwang, who remains the only Asian-American writer to have succeeded on Broadway (with M. Butterfly). He also won an Obie for Yellow Face. In the latter play, Hwang tackles the issues of cultural identity, political correctness and racial prejudice in a personal and satirical way. He puts himself in the story: DHH, played by Jeffrey Sun, narrates the play and is in just about every scene, fighting as best he can to stand up for a color-blind theater and society. He’s a long way from a super-hero, though, as he makes tactical mistakes all along the way—and sometimes falls victim to depression, booze, and self-loathing anger. What triggers the main action in the play is the 1990 announcement by producer Cameron Mackintosh that he has cast Jonathan Pryce, a Caucasian actor in the lead role of Miss Saigon. This infuriates DHH and most of the Asian-American theatrical community, who believe it’s a return to the past’s “yellow face days,” when almost all Asians in films and theatre were played by whites with painted faces and taped-up eyes. As a prominent playwright, DHH becomes a spokesman for the embattled rebels who want to challenge the status quo, make the powers-that-be cast authentic ethnic actors in race-specific roles. That battle becomes a lot more complicated and nuanced when, some years later, DHH himself discovers that the wonderful actor he has cast in a new play of his—Marcus Gee (Roman Moretti)—is in fact a white guy whose real name is Marcus G. Dahlman. Because he wants his play to succeed, DHH not only stands up for Marcus but tries to convince everyone that he is indeed an Asian—“a Siberian Jew.” Marcus doubts at first that he can get away with this fib, but lo and behold, he gleefully changes his mind when he is hailed as a hero by the Asian-Americans themselves and becomes a major star. Pretty soon he believes his own story and becomes a spokesman for “the real yellow faces out there,” supplanting DHH himself in that role. Yellow Face gets a lot more complicated after that, with DHH bringing his father HYH (Alfonso Faustino) into the story. A banker and proud immigrant, HYH ran afoul of the FBI and various tinhorn politicians who accused this super-patriot of betraying the USA by fiddling the books for the Chinese government. Another racist incident is referenced: the arrest of a Chinese-American nuclear physicist on the grounds of stealing secrets for the Chinese. Once again, as DHH points out, the image of the evil Asian is trotted out to smear an entire people. The numerous characters—journalists, agents, FBI men, congressmen, TV stars, Asian-American activists, etc.—who appear in Yellow Face are handled by the extraordinary, seven-person cast, all of whom use their voices, body language, and facial expressions to instantly make you believe in them. Working on a bare stage whose only props are chairs, a few phones and a cage-like backdrop, the actors move in tightly choreographed fashion, bringing Hwang’s world to vibrant, hilarious life.
