Hollywood history comes alive at East West Players in Philip W. Chung’s Unbroken Blossoms, a fascinating and elucidating behind-the-scenes look at the silent movie classic that was Hollywood’s first interracial love story.

Director D.W. Griffith may have created a landmark of American cinema in 1915’s The Birth Of A Nation, but his two-hour-long epic had enraged black filmgoers with its racist depictions of African-American lives during and after the Civil War and its depiction of the Ku Klux Klan as heroic defenders of the Caucasian race.

In response to being branded a bigot, Griffith adapted Thomas Burke’s unfortunately titled short story “The Chink and the Child” as 1919’s Broken Blossoms, a film he hoped would redeem him in the public eye.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Griffith (Arye Gross) cast his favorite leading lady, superstar Lillian Gish (Alexandra Hellquist), as Lucy, the teenaged victim of horrific parental abuse.

Less obvious, at least to 21-century eyes, was the director’s decision to have the decidedly not Asian actor Richard Barthelmess (Conlan Ledwith) play Cheng Huan, the Chinese immigrant who comes to Lucy’s rescue, in yellowface.

At the very least D.W. had the good sense to hire a couple of Chinese-American consultants, Moon Kwan (Ron Song) and James B. Leong (Gavin K. Lee), in hopes of ensuring authenticity, a task Moon takes considerably more seriously than James, who’s mainly interested in learning filmmaking from a master before making “my own movies about the Chinese, but none of this Chink And The Child bullshit.”

Over the course of two compelling acts, playwright Chung takes us behind the scenes as we witness Richard’s well-meaning but thoroughly embarrassing efforts to “walk the way the Chinese walk.”

We also get to be flies on the wall as D.W. Griffith shoots Broken Blossoms’ infamous “closet scene,” one said to have left a screaming Lillian in tears.

Perhaps more significantly, we witness the effect the Broken Blossoms shoot had on aspiring filmmaker James (who lives out his own interracial love story with Hellquist’s nurse Gilda Brown) and devoted family man Moon, whose own life is irrevocably altered by events occurring during the shoot.

All of this adds up to both a probing look at race relations at at time when Chinese immigrants were still denied U.S. citizenship and a veritable gift to classic film buffs.

Director Jeff Liu grounds Unbroken Blossoms’ World Premiere with the understated but powerful matching star turns delivered by Lee and Song as two largely forgotten figures in American film history.

Lee, who’s got leading man written all over him, reveals both James Leong’s pragmatism and his passion for movie making, and morphs subtly but believably from the young James to his 40-year-older self and back, and Song (of Jury Duty fame) is equally fine as a man whose high ideals don’t get the appreciation they deserve, and as a son proud to carry on his father’s legacy.

L.A. stage favorite Gross captures the larger-than-life Griffith’s genius and his ego and his idiosyncrasies to memorable effect and the exquisite Hellquist is quite simply Lillian Gish returned to life (and her feisty, gritty Gilda is just as fabulous),

Last but not least, Ledwith steals pretty much every scene he’s in as the flamboyant, well-meaning, but cluelessly offensive Barthelmess, and doubles strikingly as a man whose racism Birth Of A Nation only served to enflame.

Unbroken Blossoms’ eye-catching production design represents the collaborative contributions of scenic designer Mina Kinukawa, projection designer Sam Clevenger, properties designer Michael O’Hara, costume designer Jaymee Ngernwichit, lighting designer Wesley Charles Siu Muen Chew, and sound designer Cinthia Nava, and Cesar Cipriano has choreographed a dramatic fight sequence between Song and at least two invisible assailants that’s a bona fide gut-puncher.

Ty Aldridge, Paul Dateh, and Valerie Rose Lohman are understudies.

Tracy Winters is dialect coach. Shinshin Yuder Tsai is intimacy director. Kelly Rodriguez is assistant lighting designer. Brandon Hong Cheng is stage manager and Irene DM Lee is assistant stage manager.

Informative, entertaining, and compelling in equal measure, Philip W. Chung’s Unbroken Blossoms may be a particular treat for film aficionados, but even those who’ve never heard of the silent movie legends it resurrects let alone the hidden figures it salutes will want to stand up and cheer.

East West Players, David Henry Hwang Theatre, 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles.
www.eastwestplayers.org

–Steven Stanley
June 30, 2024
Photos: Zev Rose Woolley

Tags: D.W. Griffith, East West Players, Lillian Gish, Los Angeles Theater Review, Philip W. Chung, Richard Barthelmess