At first that trajectory is broadly satiric. Hwang enjoys skewering the shallowness of showbiz folk, starting with himself. His onstage avatar, “DHH” (played by the wonderfully funny and self-effacing Hoon Lee), comes off looking ridiculous, beginning when he commits the very sin he criticized in Miss Saigon—casting a white actor to play an Asian lead. By exploiting the topsy-turvy comic possibilities, he shows how we are all judged, misjudged, and prejudged based on our looks. “Everybody gets typecast,” says Kathryn A. Layng, playing Jane Krakowski, who appeared in an early flop of Hwang’s and is the unlikely voice of wisdom here.
As the decade wears on, the tone gets a little darker, the stakes noticeably higher. The ability to resist our typecasting, to remake ourselves as we wish, is crucial to the American dream. Yet as Hwang shows, both the Clinton-era campaign-finance scandals implicating Asian businessmen (including his father) and the Wen Ho Lee debacle (for which an unnamed Times reporter gets a severe lashing here) show how fragile that ability remains.
It’s hardly new to say that prejudice thrives in modern America, and there’s nothing novel about the meta-level flourish that caps the play (Charlie Kaufman is way out in front of that pack). Yet you have to admire Hwang’s ability to keep his sense of humor while doing a difficult thing: Motivated by an angry but heartfelt patriotism, he is challenging a country he plainly loves.
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