Yellow Face

Yellow Face

David Henry Hwang

Shotgun Players

Following a decade in the 1990s when Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson railed against the growing influence of Chinese Americans and questioned where their loyalties really lay (going famously after nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee as a traitor), David Henry Hwang opened in 2007 his play, Yellow Face, a brilliantly scripted satire about the intersection of race, politics, and the media in America.  After 9/11, American politicians and newspaper headlines turned their attention from China to both foreigners and American citizens of Muslim backgrounds in order to demonize and accuse them of being against the U.S.  Following Osama bin Laden’s demise and the coupled coming of COVID and Trump, attention shifted once again to demonizing China, leading to a sharp increase in Anti-Asian prejudice and acts of atrocity against Asian-Americans, especially those with Chinese heritage.  

With the second term of Trump, the anti-Chinese, anti-Asian feelings have reemerged with vengeance, led by him as cheerleader.  What better moment for Shotgun Players to open a fast-paced, visually fascinating, and totally engrossing production of Yellow Face in which the fear and distrust of anything Chinese bumps up against opposing views about theatrical casting based on race.

A play that is part memoir of its playwright, part factual of many actual people and headlined events, and part pure fiction with a character and surrounding events that smack totally of truth, Yellow Face at times feels like both a live-action history lesson and a playwright’s gripping recounting of a harrowing period of his life.  In fact, the play is both and much more.  

Yellow Face raises many issues about what constitutes racial identity; about representation and misrepresentation of race on the stage; and about assumptions made about race by the media, by political leaders, and by all of us.  At the same time, these serious topics are given a huge dosage of biting and often laugh-out-loud humor to make their points even more powerful.

Coming off his Tony Award winning success of M Butterfly — the first Asian American playwright to win such an honor — DHH (i.e., guess who?) becomes enraged that Miss Saigon is about to open on Broadway with Jonathan Price, a white actor, playing the lead, Vietnamese character.  While the Great White Way and Hollywood had had a long history of such “yellow face” castings (Warner Oland as Charlie Chan, Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Yul Brenner in the King and I, etc.), DHH becomes the poster face of leading an Equity Actors union charge against the show’s opening, leading to its closing in 1990 (only to reopen a year later for a ten-year run).  For that, we hear Mayor Koch, Dick Cavett, and even a representative from B’Nai B’rith condemn DHH and the union.  (“Casting decisions should be based on individual talent and merit, not on race.”)

As DHH sticks to his guns that a white should not be cast in an Asian role (would any producer ever attempt to cast someone in black face?), he last-minute casts in error Marcus G. Dahlman — a white, Jewish actor — for the role of a Chinese man in his upcoming Broadway premiere of Face Value, believing upon meeting him that Marcus must be “Eurasian.”  When it becomes clear to him that Marcus is 100% white, DHH panics and creates a whole backstory that Marcus’ father’s Russian heritage is being part of the “lost tribe of Siberian Jews” (Siberia being closest part of Russia to China), eventually convincing even Marcus that in his heart if not in his face, he is truly Asian.  Formerly just-Jewish Marcus Dahlman becomes known by his new stage name as Jewish, Chinese-American Marcus Gee — an identity created on the spot in a news interview by the quick-thinking, now lying DHH.

A quick flop on Broadway of Face Value ends the fabricated make-over of Marcus — or so thinks DHH until he hears that the blonde-haired, blue-eyed “Marcus Gee” is not only now staring in a revival of The King and I, but is being heralded as “throwing off the ghost of Yul Brenner and rewriting the King for our multicultural age.”  With Marcus also being awarded “Most Promising Newcomer Warrior” by the Asian-American Actors Association, DHH is appalled and ready to go to war in a battle he soon finds that all guns are pointed at him and not at the adored Marcus Ghee.

Ben Chau-Chiu is the nervously pacing, emotionally charged, often eruptive DHH.   His increasingly growling, grumbling persona with wrinkled brow and pounding, fisted hands is in great contrast to the radiant ease of big-smiling, warm-hearted Marcus (William Brosnahan).  That is especially true as the crusading Marcus becomes ever-more sincere, impassioned, and outspoken as a new leader speaking up and leading rallies for the rights of Asian Americans.  Marcus has fully embraced an old Chinese concept that we are “the face we choose to show the world,” and the face he is showing to all is one he now believes is truly Asian.  The more he does so, the more angry and appalled DHH becomes.

Together, Chau-Chiu and Brosnahan are terrific in their contrasting roles and in hilarious interactions where Marcus tries to thank DHH for his ‘discovering’ him while DHH is doing all he can to convince Marcus he is a fraud.

An important, interlacing sub-plot of Hwang’s semi-autobiographical work is the story of his close relationship with his father — an immigrant who greatly relishes his fifty years as an American and who hero worships the likes of Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, and especially Frank Sinatra.  Like Frank, HYH prides himself in “I did it my way,” becoming very successful in establishing the Far East National Bank in California — one with much investment by Chinese-Americans.  

Contributions to political campaigns, suspicions growing fueled by Senator Thompson against the influence of Chinese Americans, and a bank Board seat that DHH takes just to appease his father lead both father and son into the spotlight of a congressional investigation and a reporter’s pointed inquiries.  The parallel story is heart-warming in terms of DHH’s interactions with his father, often hilarious in the persona of a father who has light-hearted ways of looking at the world, and shocking to see the venom coming from D.C. and from the media as both look for headlines to pour fuel on the increasing distrust of Chinese-Americans and their connection to China itself.

Joseph Alvarado is in many ways the star of the show in the role of HYH.  His twinkling eyes, his loving and playful pokes at his son, his embodiment as a grateful and proud immigrant make his appearances special.  But when the tides turn against him and against those like him caught in the ugly web of xenophobia, his about face of faith in the American Dream is palpable, heart-breaking, and impactful.  His story is so timely to what is happening even today as likened suspicions are falsely aroused by both our president and by the likes of Fox News.

Besides his primary role as HYH, Joseph Alvarado along with cast members Chloe Wong, Alan Coyne, and Nicole Odell play multiple roles — as many as twenty or more each including TV announcers and personalities, politicians, reporters, and quick purveyors of actual headlines of newspapers and magazines.  Their switches of personalities, ages, races, and walks of life occur often instantaneously mid-step across the stage with just a quick turn and about face.  

Chloe Wong is particularly striking in her role as Korean-American actress Leah Anne Cho who falls in love with co-star Marcus Gee and becomes his strident defender against the accusations of her ex, DHH.  

As the investigating reporter NWOAOC (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel), Alan Coyne is almost like a viper trying quite unsuccessfully to hide his venom as he slithers toward DHH with an awaiting tape recorder, a smirked smile, and an acclaimed “I bring no agenda of my own” — all the time just baiting DHH to rat on his accused father.  

Nicole Odell convincingly is actress Jane Krakowski who costars with Marcus in Face Value and opens DHH’s eyes about Marcus’ true racial identity.  Like others, she deftly switches persona that wildly range for her from the likes of Lily Tomlin to Ed Koch to the mothers of both DHH and Marcus.

Director Daniel J. Eslick sets the play within a darkened museum of both Asian artifacts and stereotypes on highlighted display in glass-enclosed boxes both hung and on the floor — the visually impressive set designed by Clint Sumalpong and the intriguing enclosed exhibits, by props designer Micaela Kieko Sinclair.  Eslick incorporates also a large, transparent box on rollers with one lone mike that has a variety of uses including media spot for headlines, TV announcer box, and prosecuting Senator’s soap box for drilling into his cowering witness below.  The quick paced, ever-changing scenes are often given a razor’s edge of sharpness by the Director’s choices as well as suddenly slowed to focus on the poignant moments of DHH and his father or on the hilarity of a Marcus Ghee suddenly playing a King everyone believes is Asian.

With the exception of some slightly stumbled lines occurring several times by Ben Chau-Chiu (each quickly corrected), the sold-out matinee I attended on May 18 was impressively executed as dozens of scenes and characters flashed by in what seemed a short two hours (with one intermission).  How lucky is the Bay Area for Shotgun Players to open a locally produced, most excellent production of David Henry Hwang’s compelling Yellow Face just as the play’s 2024 revival on Broadway has also garnered multiple Tony nominations to be awarded during Shotgun’s already-extended run.  

Rating: 5 E

A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production

Yellow Face continues in extensions through June 14, 2025, in a two-hour (one intermission) production by Shotgun Players, 1901 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley, California.  Tickets are available on line at https://shotgunplayers.org, by email at boxoffice@shotgunplayers.org, or by phone at 510-841-6500, ext. 303.

Photo Credits: Robbie Sweeny