M. Butterfly premieres

At its most fundamental, M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang's remarkable 1988 Tony Award-winning play, is about perception. It is the story of a man who wants so desperately to believe in something that he will blind himself to the truth, until the bitter end. Taken from real-life events, Hwang has created a play based on the historical figure Bernard Boursicot, a French diplomat who was arrested in France for espionage for the People's Republic of China. This controversial piece of history is brought to life in Oberlin this weekend in the Theater and Dance Department's opening mainstage production of the 1999-2000 season. It is being directed by Chair of the Theater Department Jane Armitage.

Boursicot claimed he had begun conducting the espionage to retain his relationship with Shi Pei Pu, a Beijing opera singer he met while stationed in the diplomatic corps in Beijing. As the investigation got underway, it became apparent that during his 20-year relationship with Shi Pei Pu, he had no knowledge that the singer was a man.

In Hwang's work, Boursicot becomes Rene Gallimard (played by Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater Tom Freeland), who narrates the play from his jail cell. Shi Pei Pu's fictional double is Song Liling (sophomore William Dao).

Parallels can be drawn between M. Butterfly and Stanley Kubrick's final movie, the haunting Eyes Wide Shut. Both Hwang's and Kubrick's stories rest on the idea of a protagonist who is so obsessed with a fundamental concept that he refuses to see anything else. Audience members are objective viewers to both of these men's break-ups and, ultimately, their breakthroughs in perception. In a play as multi-faceted as this, it takes an extremely strong and talented group of actors to make the audience believe that what Gallimard is going through is the ultimate struggle between his head -where his ego resides - and his heart - where his emotions lie.

Hwang demands a huge amount from the director, the actors, and the design team who tackle his huge play. This is carried off to only middling success in Oberlin's production.

At the core of the play is the character of Gallimard. Freeland's performance is frustrating. Early in the first scene, Gallimard proclaims to the audience from his jail cell that "men should be scratching at my door begging for my secrets." The performance did not warrant that sort of interest or support. To his credit, Freeland does handle the fiendishly difficult last scenes very well, and within these last scenes, there is a true sense of regret and wistfulness. In the last scene, he tells Song that, "You, if anyone, should know that I am pure imagination." It is in this last scene of the play that Freeland's Gallimard feels genuine, emerging from its muted cocoon to fly.

Of course, the other pivotal character in M. Butterfly is Song Liling, the Chinese opera star/Chinese agent. Dao has the dubious honor of attempting this marathon part and he certainly gives it a good shot. The actor playing Song is not supposed to fool the audience about his sex, á la The Crying Game, but rather is supposed to indicate a fluid transition between the male and the female persona. This task demands extreme choices in physicalization and vocal work. The part demands a boldness, while is certainly evident in Dao's characterization, is not carried far enough.

By the end, when Song disregards his female persona in favor of his real male self, there should be more of a bodily transformation, as well as a costume transformation. The feminine aspect of the character wasn't quite developed enough, and the fluidity that Song represents does not wholly emerge. Yet the work that Dao has done is solid nonetheless, and he should be commended. The frankness and honesty he does display while performing this very complex part is heartfelt and sincere.

One of the core problems with this production is the design. Sometimes less is more, but not in the case of M. Butterfly. Because the play is a memory piece, and because it is essentially Gallimard's monologue, space and context must be clearly delineated by more than just the words of the script and the actors' body language and stage position. Resident scenic designer Mike Grube's design for M. Butterfly is a scrim with various projected patterns and three sliding shoji screens of various sizes. Armitage was clearly pursuing a minimalist reading of the play, yet the stage felt too empty. The audience needed more to go on in order for the locales that Hwang creates to come alive. In the best of all worlds, M. Butterfly's set would be more of a concrete architectural set which would still be able to afford the play its jumps in memory and place. Grube designed such a set in his wonderful work on last fall's main stage production Kindertransport, also directed by Armitage.

This is not to suggest that Armitage's production is completely bereft of any verve. On the contrary, there are a number of extremely touching and well-articulated moments within the production. Overall, however, the production lacks cohesive and compelling momentum with which to tell Gallimard's story. The play rests on the carefully constructed ambiguity of its ending, and although there was palpable emotion emanating from the actors on the Hall auditorium stage, this delicate conclusion seems rather flat.

There is nice support work by the rest of the ensemble. Particularly effective is sophomore Aaron Mucciolo as Gallimard's best friend, sophomore Catherine Miller as Gallimard's all-but-forgotten wife, and sophomore Erin Shiba in a variety of rules. Mucciolo adds a nice element of camaraderie to the proceedings and Miller shines in her frustrated scenes with Gallimard. Shiba is particularly energetic as Song's maid Suzuki.

Though M. Butterfly may not fly as high as its namesake, it is still an evocative and conversation-building piece of contemporary American theater. Armitage and her cast continue to probe and uncover good questions within Hwang's text. As theater critic Robert Brustein once said, "If you don't have theater that provokes, why do it?" Oberlin's production of M. Butterfly certainly does that.

East Meets West: Song Liling (William Dao) confronts the diplomat Rene Gallimard (Tom Freeland). (photo by Areca Treon)