Butterfly Bimbo

David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly is ripe with juicy theatricality.

by David Anthony Fox

At last, a chance for the Philadelphia Theatre Company to showcase its fine new theater! David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly is ripe with juicy theatricality, and Joe Calarco's production exploits it to the fullest.

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I just wish it added up to more than that. The play certainly starts with a great story (based on a real situation): Rene Gallimard (played by Christopher Innvar), a French diplomat serving in Peking through the 1960s, falls head over heels in love with Song (the androgynously beautiful Telly Leung), a star performer in the Peking Opera. It's complicated — Gallimard is married, yet unsophisticated when it comes to sex. (Innvar, who looks dapper and confident throughout, is a rather odd piece of casting.) But when Song returns Gallimard's affection, it empowers the Frenchman in all the wrong ways, turning him brutish in relationships and careless in politics. He'll pay for it many times over: Song turns out to be 1) a spy, and 2) a man — and Gallimard's career and self-image unravel.

When the true story originally leaked, the public was mainly interested in the sex: Was it really possible that a man (moreover, a Frenchman!) could have 20 years of coital relations, all the while believing his (male) partner to be female? Hwang explores this a bit, but he's really more interested in the psychology of their attachment — and the clash of Eastern and Western political and cultural values.

That's a lot to load into one play, and beyond the delusion and illusion, there's also allusion: to Puccini's Madama Butterfly, of course. Some of what Hwang achieves is terrific, especially Song's ultimate transformation, quite brilliantly handled here. But ultimately, M. Butterfly doesn't quite fulfill its promise.

A deeper problem: Hwang means us to see Gallimard's caddishness as a critique of misogyny. But the depiction of the play's two actual female characters as clutching (Gallimard's whiny wife, Helga) and castrating (Renee, his second-tier mistress) — as well as a whiff of drag-queen camp about Song — suggests the misogyny runs deeper.

Calarco's production is stronger on visual éclat than on storytelling and character work. Leung's excellent Song is the exception, though skillful as he is, he's not sufficiently convincing as a female. It's not entirely his fault — the stage is often awash with too-bright light. Surely if ever a show called for shadows and mystery, it's M. Butterfly.

M. Butterfly

Through Feb. 24, Philadelphia Theatre Company at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad St., 215-985-0420, philadelphiatheatrecompany.org.