Event Article

FULLERTON — Since college theater departments should tackle the great plays, it's about time some of them are tackling David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly."

The latest try, at Fullerton College, is serious and sincere, but it lacks Hwang's built-in sense of opera--opera as a state of mind rather than the literal art form--that makes this one of the most remarkable American plays of the last two decades.

Hwang's ambition here is for an elegant marriage of form and content. His equally tragic and pathetic hero, Rene Gallimard (Steven Biggs), falls in love with the image of the porcelain-featured, demure Chinese female as played by opera star Song Liling (B.B. Shen).

So hard does Gallimard (based on the true story of a Gallic official who was based in 1960s Peking) fall for his idol that he never discovers in a 10-year-long affair that his mistress actually is a man.

As Song tells the judges during Gallimard's subsequent vice trail, "It was my greatest performance."

This plays out inside the double-frame of both Gallimard's direct-address narration (spoken-word theater's equivalent of an aria) and Puccini's "Madama Butterfly"--the work that brought Gallimard and Song together--and the very expression for Hwang of Western wish-fulfillment for Eastern "feminine" subservience. (The U.S. war in Vietnam is raging during this curious affair.) Hwang examines, rather than deconstructs, the opera as the apotheosis of a hopeless romanticism, which in turn skews hopeless politics. The ideal "M. Butterfly" becomes a kind of opera itself, giant in scale, teeming with passions and bidding goodby to the old Western view of defined sexual roles and defined "Oriental" nation-states.

No college is likely rich enough to produce "M. Butterfly" at proper scale, nor lucky enough to have the kinds of uniquely gifted talents the play requires.

Within realistic, scaled-down expectations, director Gary Krinke's production is a modest but thoughtful attempt to deliver the play's huge ambitions. We just have to imagine the hugeness, the grand gestures, since they are not here.

* The show's look isn't even necessarily Chinese. Robert Jensen's set consists of a long, ribbon-like white ramp curving down to a black platform stage, against which lighting designer Steven Pliska paints swathes of red. The color, though Chinese, doesn't match the design, more indebted to Japanese Kabuki theater than anything else.

The two central performances equally mix, and sometimes confuse, tones. Biggs is immediately comfortable with us, resembling a kind of goody-good young Republican (Hugh Hewitt could be this guy's brother) who seems to charmingly stumble into trouble.

His fluid direct address further brings us into his confidence, complicating any easy judgments of him. But Biggs has yet to put across Gallimard's own feelings of tragic victimhood and nearly turns the final, tragic gesture into unintentional comedy.

* Shen handles the awesome assignment of Song with every ounce of skill, but it still demands too much suspension of our disbelief. That's because, try as he might, Shen instantly comes across as being in drag, not in convincing disguise. His ultimate transformation should be a shock--and the play's greatest operatic moment--but here, it's more or less casually expected.

Thus, we can't feel Gallimard watching his Westernized romance crumble. We can only watch it at a distance, and distance is not Hwang's agenda. At Fullerton College, the words (more or less) come across, but the complete work of art remains a concept.

* "M. Butterfly," Bronwyn Dodson Theatre, Fullerton College, 321 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton. Tonight, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Sunday. $10. (714) 871-8101.

Steven Biggs: Gallimard

B.B. Shen: Song Liling

Erica Dudek: Helga

Jane Yee: Comrade Chin/Suzuki/Shu-Fang

Alonzo Dean CQ: Marc/Man No. 2/Consul Sharpless

Kelly Hardy: Renee/Party Woman/Magazine Girl

Arron Lico: Toulon/Judge

Laura Pinto: Dancer

Tiffany Sauceda: Dancer

A Fullerton College Theatre Arts Department production of David Henry Hwang's play. Directed by Gary Krinke. Set: Robert Jensen. Lights: Steven Pliska. Costumes: Mela Hoyt-Heydon.Choreography: Lee Martino. Makeup: Joseph Saenz.