Phillyist Reviews... M. Butterfly

Warning: This whole review is basically a spoiler. Despite its infamy, there are apparently people out there who are still surprised by the "twist" at the end of M. Butterfly, currently being produced by the Philadelphia Theatre Company. These are the same people who are confused by Ru Paul. Please proceed with caution.

Let's just get this out of the way, folks.

Butterfly in David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, just like Dil in The Crying Game, is a man.

I'm not trying to spoil anything for you by telling you that. In fact, anyone with good eyes and an ear for context clues ("Do you know why all the women in the Peking Opera are played by men?" asks Butterfly, who we first encounter at the Peking Opera) would probably figure it out, even without looking in the program and seeing the actor's headshot. Besides, I figured that, because the play was made into a film starring Jeremy Irons, everyone kind of knew the truth, even if they hadn't ever seen the play or the film. Just like with The Crying Game.

But oh no! People were shocked—incensed, even!—to discover, in a beautifully staged moment during the play's second act, that Butterfly isn't a woman. The man beside me exclaimed to his wife: "She's a man?!" And in the lobby after the show, the general babble was full of "Did you see it coming?"s and "I never would have imagined!"s. Tempted though I may be to cynically look down upon these people from my Ivy-covered tower, call them uncultured cretins, and laugh at their naivety, I instead take this as an opportunity to revel in the magic of the theatre. Because although, in this new production directed by Joe Calarco, we have dozens of clues telling us that Butterfly (Telly Leung) is really a man, there are those in the audience who believe, or at least want to believe, just like Butterfly's lover, Gallimard (Christopher Innvar), that she is not just a woman, but rather the feminine ideal. And to many men, she is: a woman created by a man.

Michael Fagin's gorgeous set and Chris Lee's effective lighting help the audience lose themselves in this dream world that Helen Huang so perfectly costumed. Despite his rather square jaw and chiseled features, Leung, whether in kimono or "western" dress, moves about the raked stage as a woman would. The aforementioned scene that showcases "her" transformation into a man, though not surprising, is still startling because the transformation is so complete: nothing of Butterfly remains in the swaggering, handsome, well-dressed man we discover her to be.

And so, even knowing how it all ends, it's easy to understand Gallimard's confusion at his betrayal. For twenty years, he'd been living a lie. Innvar acts the pathos perfectly, giving us a peek from the beginning at the tragedy of it all without losing the dramatic tension too soon. His fate is an operatic one, an inevatibility from the beginning when he outlines the Puccini opera from which this play takes its name, and yet rather than acting into the cliché, you find yourself sometimes pitying, and almost always liking him – asshole though he may sometimes be.

The production has its weaknesses, especially in the first act (like the use of too many sight gags trying to cover Butterfly's face the first few times we see the character – very Austin Powers), but all in all and with the help of a fabulous supporting cast (including, most notably, Larry Petersen, Barrymore winner Jared Michael Delaney, and Barrymore nominee Susan Wilder), PTC's latest production is nothing short of a beautifully effective staging of one of the more infamous plays written in the late Twentieth Century.

Telly Leung (left) and Christopher Innvar (right) in Philadelphia
Theatre Company's production of M. Butterfly, continuing at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre through February 24. Photo by Mark Garvin.