"M. Butterfly" at the Cort Theatre

Clive Owen and Jin Ha
Phoro Credit: Matthew Murphy

Playwright David Henry Hwang made an auspicious Broadway debut in 1988 with M. Butterfly. The play and its original two stars - John Lithgow and B.D. Wong -  received deserved awards and accolades. Almost thirty years later, the play remains overflowing with ideas and enigmas. The plot cannot help but grip an  audience with its strange and thoroughly engrossing fictionalized account of a true newspaper story about a French diplomat, convicted of passing top secrets to a spy over a period of 20 years. The diplomat had maintained that he never knew that the spy, also his lover - a Chinese actor and Beijing Opera diva - was a man. This provoking revival has been directed by Julie Taymor (Lion King) with tweaks and updates by the author.

Told in flashback from his cell in a French jail, the story of Rene Gallimard’s (Clive Owen) surrender to a bizarre affair, that seemingly defies Western sensibilities, logic and rationale, is evocatively paralleled with the male-female relationship in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Evidently infatuated from the moment he sees the intriguing Song Liling (Jin Ha) perform the title role at the opera, the timid Gallimard is quickly swept away by the adoration and attention lavished upon him by the femme fatale with kimono.

In his riveting play, Hwang deftly exposes and explores the bridge that exists between Western and Eastern thought on every subject from race to class to sex to politics. But his play doesn’t dwell on the familiar clichés usually associated with East meets West. In fact, the more the relationship between Rene and Song appears harder to accept in light of their prolonged affair, the more Hwang appears to be probing complex feelings about Eastern and Western cultures specifically the chasm between assertive and submissive sex.

Focused more on Gallimard’s more private feelings (“Will anyone beautiful ever want me?”), the first half of the play is a little less compelling than the stunning denouement which exposes Song’s  own unashamedly revelatory account of the affair. As an empathetic observer, it is shattering to see the tragically deceived Gallimard descend into abyss of total fantasy and even madness.

Owen’s Gallimard is emphatically second rate yet we see him as the eager manipulator who envisions  himself, for the first time in his life, as confident lover rather than as the duped dummy he really is. For all his converging feelings and emotional ambiguities, Owen gives a restrained but totally convincing performance. It is certainly as assured and compelling as the one he gave a few season back in Harold Pinter’s Old Times, his Broadway debut.

Certainly more extravagant in its concept, the role of Song is both cynically and excitingly portrayed by Ha, who is making his Broadway debut. I can’t imagine how the cataclysmic collision of Song’s feminine and masculine natures could be more thrillingly revealed than it is by Ha. Taymor’s crisp direction sweeps the action along, in and around designer Paul Steinberg’s often spectacularly painted panels that frame the play. Humor and drama weave through vivid scenes of traditional and post revolutionary Chinese operas as the cast moves from semi-detached narrative back into character and from fantasy to reality.

The often stunning costumes is the work of designer Constance Hoffman) Designer Donald Holder’s superb lighting enhanced both the intimate and the more extravagantly staged scenes. Choreographer Ma Cong gives the small corps of dancers a chance to shine in both the traditional Chinese Opera scenes with its martial arts and another that exploits the  fervor of armed Cultural Revolutionaries.

Murray Bartlett is excellent as Gallimard’s boorish friend as is Michael Countryman as Gallimard’s snide superior and in other roles. Enid Graham is appropriately frosty as Gallimard’s wife Agnes. Celeste Den, making her Broadway debut, is standout as a stereotypical member of the Cultural Revolution. These minor characters make significant impact in a powerful and mysterious play that is as fascinating to contemplate as it is entertaining to watch.

"M. Butterfly" at the Cort Theatre 138 W. 48th Street