“Yellow Face” is the darling of Broadway these days. It’s up for a Tony for Best Revival of a Play, actor Daniel Dae Kim was nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal, and Francis Jue is a contender for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role. There is also a recently aired PBS “Great Performances” production. But why travel or stare at a flat screen? You can see Shotgun Player’s winning production of “Yellow Face,” lighting up the Ashby Stage in Berkeley through June 14, 2025.
Director Daniel J. Eslick, the fine cast of actors, the sophisticated set design and lighting, all make the two-act “Yellow Face” come alive. It’s not an easy production to pull off because the play delicately balances humor, irony, farce, and family dynamics with issues of identity, race, politics, and the media. Although Shotgun’s production was a bit tentative on opening night, the multi-talented playwright David Henry Hwang’s creative, ironic, farcical, and sophisticated writing holds all the disparate elements together and makes us laugh at him while he laughs at himself.
David Henry Hwang’s “Yellow Face” was first performed in 2007, but it’s based on a semi-biographical series of events that began in 1988. When he accepted his Tony for Best Play for his mega-hit, “M. Butterfly,” Hwang was the only man of Asian descent ever to write a Broadway play. In his acceptance speech, he said, “Asians have consistently been caricatured, denied the right even to play ourselves … All that changes now.”
But Hwang spoke a bit prematurely, because in 1989, white actor Jonathan Pryce was cast as a Eurasian pimp in the musical “Miss Saigon.” This led to years of protests and an Actors Equity brouhaha. David Henry Hwang’s later play “Face Value” (which closed in previews on Broadway) became the inspiration for this one, the semi-autobiographical “Yellow Face.” When you see “Yellow Face,” in which the playwright is named “DHH” (nicely acted by Ben Chau-Chiu), this background is entertainingly explained and makes perfect sense.
In the ironic twists of all ironic twists, DHH’s efforts to find the perfect, sexy Asian leading man for “Face Value” wind up with him unknowingly casting a white actor, Marcus (first-rate William Brosnahan). And how DHH handles this absurd situation is the comical heart of this entertainingly funny, multi-dimensional play.
There is a provocative sub-plot about DHH’s late father, Henry Y. Hwang, a self-made Chinese immigrant, who went on to found the first federally chartered Asian American bank in the United States. In the late 1990s, he innocently got caught up in Senate hearings regarding the possibility of illegal Chinese campaign contributions and influence. No charges were ever brought, but it sure makes good theater now.
By Emily S. Mendel
emilymendel@gmail.com
© Emily S. Mendel 2025 All Rights Reserved
