David Henry Hwang: “The reason men played the role of women
in Chinese opera is because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act”. If
I might add my two cents, I might say that only a man would have the chutzpah
to make such a statement.
South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa is rolling out the
revisited classic, "M. Butterfly” by David Henry Hwang. It is the last show of
the season on the Segerstrom Stage and is playing through June 8th.
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| Lucas Verbrugghe and Jake Manabat |
Words like drag, gender bending, homosexuality, homosexual,
lesbian, gay rights, cross dressing, unisex, LGBTQ you name it are etched into
our collective vocabularies. But in the mid 60’s nothing of the sort was
discussed in public.
Hwang’s play “M. Butterfly” is a fictionalized account of a
1986 article Hwang read in a news article describing a 20 -year relationship between French diplomat Bernard
Bouriscot and an opera singer he believed to be a woman named Song Liling.
According to Hwang, ‘the article sparked the idea for his new
play “M. Butterfly”. From there the playwright took those facts and bought them
to new heights creating his own answers to the questions so many had about the
diplomat and his lover’.
The play went to Broadway in 1988 and was nominated for numerous
awards including the Tony for BD Wong who played Song. In 1983 the two men were
arrested on charges of espionage.
Hwang recently went back to take another look at the piece
before the 2017 Broadway revival and made a few changes. That revival opened
Oct. 6th 2018 and closed January 14th 2018 after having
played 19 previews and 93 regular performances.
Recently, my friend and I took the 405 to Costa Mesa to have
another look as well.
Being the great story- teller he is (“Golden Child”, “Yellow
Face”), Hwang weaves a tale of illicit love and foreign intrigue. Blending
cultural, racial and gender politics with ease and pushing the limits of
reality, almost leaning on the side of fantasy, it was natural for most to
watch it play out in disbelief.
The story opens with Gallimard (Lucas Verbrugghe) in his
prison cell in France. From his vantage point he relives the twenty years of
his life as a diplomat and lover to Song Liling (Jake Manabat) the Chinese
opera singer and spy he believed to be a woman.
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| Lucas Verbrugghe, Stephen Caffery and Nike Doukas |
Told in flashback, he shares with the audience his
insecurities around and with women, his lackluster marriage to a wife he did
not love, his love of Puccini’s grand opera, “Madama Butterfly” and the fact
that his superiors in the Embassy condoned his affair, no egged it on. Song, in
the meantime, working as a spy for the Chinese government. He was getting the
information back to the Communists who in turn let him live a lifestyle of comfort not too common among the general population. Finally both fell out of favor and René was
sent back to France, Song was incarcerated for homosexuality and the scandal brought disgrace and ruin to both.
While the story within the story is unraveled, zigzagging in and
out of their clandestine relationships with doubts and with dueling battles for
each man to tell his side, one has to wonder how Gallimard could not know.
In a TMI outburst at the court hearing during their trial,
Song describes how he was able to pull off the sex act to satisfy his lover. (He
also strips to the altogether to convince once and for all that he is a he.) That
information (how he was able to perform the sex act), graphic as it was, had to
make sense to the then willing parties. As graphic as it was, it answered, to
some degree, the nagging questions about Gallimard’s gullibility. Yet his and
our ability to separate reality from fantasy was never arrested.
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| Jake Manabat, Melody Bunu and Lucas Verbrugghe |
Gallimard stayed in the relationship. As the playwright shows
over and over again the stereotypical and submissive Song in his/her
stereotypical Eastern training satisfied and built his/her lover’s ego enough
to remain loyal over time.
With so much of their lives paralleling,
domineering/submissiveness, eroticism and male cruelty in Puccini’s ‘Butterfly’
the play follows the same plot lines (with the exception of the ending) and themes
as it plays out to Puccini’s music with sound design and original music by
Andre J. Pluess.
As staged by Desdemona Chiang, Hwang’s thoughts are
shared when he notes that having the first Asian- American and woman directing
this production ‘it might bring new insight and perspectives to the work’. From
this reviewers point of view I’m not quite sure what that would look like.
Having seen the play over more than thirty years ago and this only the third
time, most of what I remember hasn't seem to have changed.
 |
| Lucas Verbrugghe and Jake Manabat |
The questions of incredulity and skepticism, homosexuality,
gender bending, East/West cultures and youthful curiosity still filtered into
my brain. Unfortunately, I found the intimacy, struggles and tensions between
the two men lacking in chemistry. The relationships when intimate were cautious
and reserved at best. Where was the passion?
Manabat’s pretense as a woman never convinced, although I
wasn’t the one needing convincing. Even with Hwang’s statement mentioned above,
Song’s feminine wiles looked too masculine to satisfy. Verbrugghe’s René didn’t
fit the bill to my satisfaction as the lover in a ‘love at any cost’, lover. His
mannerisms and passion never showed through. Could be the direction or in
reality they both knew the truth and lived out a fantasized homosexual
partnership?
The ensemble has Nike Doukas as René’s discontented wife
Agnes, giving us an insight into their lackluster and loveless relationship. She
and Juliana Hanson come on as a pair of pushy gals convincing us of René’s lack
of sexual experience.
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| Lucas Verbrugghe and Jake Manabat |
Aaron Blakely makes a brief appearance mouthing his aria in
Butterfly as Pinkerton, the American bastard in Puccini’s opera who thought
marrying a Geisha might satisfy his needs while he was abroad in the East, never
having to live up to his responsibilities as a man and as Western culture
dictates.
He also plays Marc, Rene’s old friend trying to goad René
into going on the town to meet some gals. He's a bit over the top and comes off as a real jerk. Stephen Caffery
is Toulon, René’s boss with just a bit more life than the rest helps move the
story along as he passes information along to René.
That is not to say that the production values are not up to
the usual standards of SCR. Ralph Funicello’s sets of sliding screens and
scrims show the emptiness of Gallimard’s cell and just a peek away Song’s well
appointed, in reds and blacks, apartment and other locations.
Sara Ryung Clelment's costumes are contemporary East/West
with the exception of Song’s gorgeous kimono and elegant dresses. John
Epstein’s lighting is perfect singling out each location and Annie Yee’s
choreography catches the mindset of the revolution with youngsters marching and
waving the Communist flags in unison.
Their story was and is as controversial, unconventional and
sensational in the 60’s as it was in 1988 when it first premiered. Even to this
day it remains a puzzle. The story that he met the male opera star, Shi Pei Pu,
47 at a German diplomats function, when he was in his 20’s is a fact. They
became good friends and the real Song invited the young accountant soon to be diplomat,
to his house. As the story goes they had sex for the first time shortly
thereafter. That still mystifies.
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| Add caption |
Imagine convincing yourself that the man you lived with for
twenty years, persuaded you that he/she was a woman, supposedly had your child
and strung you along for 20 year and, was in fact a spy and a man (and not the
man who came to dinner) and you still held on?
“You see? They toast me. I’ve
become patron saint of the socially inept. Can they really be so foolish? Men
like that — they should be scratching at my door, begging to learn my secrets!
For I, Rene Gallimard, you see, I have known, and been loved by … the Perfect
Woman”.
See you at the theatre.
Dates: Through June 8th
Organization: South Coast Repertory Theatre
Phone: 764-708-5555
Production Type: Drama
Where: 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, CA.
Ticket Prices: Start at $31.00.
Web: scr.org
Venue: Segerstrom Stage
Photo: Jordan Kubat
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