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This 'Butterfly' fails to seduce
When David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly" premiered on Broadway in 1988, The New York Times declared it "a visionary work" and "a sweeping, universal meditation on two of the most heated conflicts--men versus women, East versus West--of this or any other time."
Hwang's play dramatizes the real-life account of a French diplomat who carried on a 20-year affair with a Beijing Opera singer--a story so ridiculous it may as well be the stuff of present-day news. The singer turned out to be a Communist spy and, even more absurd, the diplomat never knew his lover was a man in drag until it was too late.
The play doesn't dwell on sleazy facts. Told predominantly from the perspective of the diplomat, here named Rene Gallimard, it is an exhumation and eventual subversion of one (White) man's psychology, the play flipping over its cards during the final act as it hands over the reins to the singer Song Liling.
Big problems
That "M. Butterfly" hasn't aged well is really for the best. Current sensibilities in this rapidly evolving society now render antiquated many of the play's arguments concerning gender and even the East-West dichotomy.
But in FrontRow Entertainment and Tony Award-winning producer Jhett Tolentino's staging of this play, the script's outdated qualities are hardly the biggest problems.
Simply put, the production directed by Kanakan Balintagos gravely bungles the poetry of Hwang's writing. This literal-mindedness consequently dilutes the power of the piece, especially in the final act.
Comedy
There is comedy here, sure, but only in superficial doses--mainly in the seduction scenes between Gallimard and Song, and occasionally in the placeless accents zooming back and forth the stage like bullets.
But a daft sense of tragedy is nowhere to be found, which is the real tragedy here. Without a firm grasp of what makes this play really powerful--the gradual fall of both White man and White nation to the "inferior," feminine Orient in a most farcical manner--what transpires onstage is reduced to mere play-acting in heavy makeup.
Paper-thin
Is it too much to pine for a more perceptively performed production, one that could do justice to Hwang's passages? Balintagos' production is populated by a paper-thin ensemble and--chief among its troubles--two lead performances that don't jibe at all.
Olivier Borten's inept portrayal of Gallimard renders the character an idiot from the beginning, so that there's no sliver of excitement, no deeper thrill at all, at watching him fall for Song's spell. It's a fool being duped from the get-go.
One may wonder, then, why RS Francisco's Song even bothers to amp up the stilted, submissive-girl theatrics for this Westerner, but only if one can get past the distracting self-consciousness that plagues Francisco's portrayal (to say nothing of his even less convincing version of the spy out of drag). This production, after all, is partly advertised as Francisco's return to the role after first doing it for Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas almost three decades ago.
Has anything changed? Alas, this writer is in no position to answer that. But this much is certain: While the onstage seduction of Gallimard by Song does occur, the more important seduction--of the audience by this play--is inexistent.
It's admirable how skillfully this "M. Butterfly" has been marketed. It sold out more than half the performances of its three-week run before it even opened, with 100 percent of the proceeds, as stated in the program, going to beneficiaries such as Philippine High School for the Arts and Love Yourself, Inc.
But a sold-out crowd deserves a better, more thoughtful and scrupulously mounted show.
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