Yellow Face – reviews of 'sparkling' race comedy

David Henry Hwang's jaunty comedy is a cleverly subversive study of political correctness

Yellow Face
(Image credit: Simon Annand)

What you need to know A revival of David Henry Hwang's comedy Yellow Face has opened at The Shed, National Theatre, London. Pulitzer-prize nominated Asian-American playwright Hwang is best known for his Broadway hit M. Butterfly.

Yellow Face is inspired by the real-life controversy that surrounded the casting of British actor Jonathan Pryce as a French-Vietnamese character in Miss Saigon. In the play a Chinese-American playwright accidentally casts a white actor in the lead Asian role in his new play, but after trying to cover up his error, he is horrified when the actor becomes a poster boy for the Asian-American community.

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