Victor/Victoria’s gender-bending trickery pales in comparison to the deception perpetrated on M. Butterfly’s Rene Gallimard in David Henry Hwang’s 1988 Best Play Tony-winning rumination on race, gender, and sexuality, whose 2017 Broadway-revival rewrite now burns up the South Coast Repertory stage with two of the most powerful lead performances in town.

The world gasped in shocked disbelief in 1986 when it was revealed that French diplomat Bernard Boursicot had passed on government secrets to a Peking Opera star with whom he had carried on a two-decade-long affair, blissfully clueless to the fact that the woman who claimed to have borne him a child was no woman at all.

Taking this truth-is-stranger-than-fiction news item as his inspiration, playwright Hwang created Rene Gallimard (Lucas Verbrugghe), whose life in mid-1960s Beijing is turned upside down the night he watches Song Liling (Jake Manabat) sing the title role in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly and dreams of being Pinkerton to her Cho Cho San.

The trouble is, Liling is only pretending to be a woman.

When M. Butterfly made its 1988 Broadway debut, producers did their best to hide the fact that its then unknown star BD Wong was male and even when Hwang’s play got its first intimate L.A. production twenty years later, its star (Manabat, who went on to understudy Jin Ha in the recent Broadway revival) was not only billed as J. Manabat but his headshot showed him in full Cho Cho San drag.

That secret is so long out of the bag that South Coast Rep makes no attempt to hide the fact that J. is Jake.

Minus a need for subterfuge, audiences can now concentrate from the get-go on what makes Rene so willing to accept what others might have perceived in an instant as flashbacks reveal a young man so intimidated by the idea of sex with a Western woman that even grown up and married to the still childless Helga (Nike Doukas), only a subservient “Oriental” will do the trick.

Backwards-and-forwards-moving scenes introduce us to Rene’s longtime best friend Marc (Aaron Blakely), as adept with women as Rene is inept; French Ambassador to Beijing Toulon (Stephen Caffrey), as incapable of marital fidelity as Rene is in getting it up with sexy Danish student Renee (Juliana Hansen); and Comrade Chin (Melody Butiu), the Chinese Communist Party official who compels Liling to seduce French government secrets from his lover and pass them on to the communists.

All of this allows playwright Hwang to explore racial stereotypes, not only in romantic/sexual relationships but in world politics as well. (Rene’s conviction that submissive “Oriental” women respond best to a domineering Western man persuades the Americans to attempt to bomb North Vietnam into submission, and you know how that turned out.)

The end result is as heady a theatrical experience as any adventurous, perceptive playgoer could wish for, and even headier at South Coast Rep since in Hwang’s 2017 Broadway revival rewrite, Liling isn’t just a man pretending to be a woman but a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. Got that?

Under Desdemona Chang’s astute direction, Blakely, Butiu, Caffrey, Doukas, and Hansen deliver all-around splendid cameo turns in multiple roles each

Ensemble players Annika Alejo, Yoko Hasebe, Andrews Lagang, and Sophy Zhao execute choreographer Annie Yee’s graceful/athletic movies to striking effect.

Still this is Rene and Liling’s show all the way.

Verbrugghe may be considerably hunkier than the real-life “Rene Gallimard,” but star turns don’t get more commanding or heartbreaking, and Manabat, already the ideal Liling when he played the role for The Production Company in 2008, is even more magnificent (and heartbreaking) ten years later.

M. Butterfly looks sensational on Ralph Funicello’s versatile, rice-paper-wall-backed set dazzlingly lit by Josh Epstein as are Sara Ryung Clement’s stunning array of costumes, from Chinese opera garb to Puccini to 1960s chic to unisex revolutionary wear, and Andre J. Pluess’s sound design and original music add dramatic effect throughout.

Christine “Yari” Cervas is assistant director. Jeff Polunas is associate sound designer. Andy Knight is dramaturg. Matthew E. Chandler and Holly Ahlborn are production managers. Moira Gleason is stage manager and Alyssa Escalante is assistant stage manager. Casting is by Joanne DeNaut, CSA.

As flavorful as the tastiest sweet-and-salty Chinese dish, M. Butterfly brings South Coast Repertory’s 2018-2019 season to a richly seasoned close.

South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.
www.scr.org

–Steven Stanley
May 19, 2019
Photos: Jordan Kubat/SCR

Tags: David Henry Hwang, Orange County Theater Review, South Coast Repertory