Helen Kim in Yellow Face, which packs an emotional punch that belies its modest setting. CREDIT:CLARE HAWLEY
On stage right now in the tiny Kings Cross Theatre is a small but significant revelation.
Dinosaurus Productions and bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company are staging the remarkably assured, deliciously complex Australian premiere of Yellow Face.While independent works are often charmingly rough around the edges, there is nothing shabby here. In a consistently funny but deeply thoughtful production, the play comes to playful, acerbic, and sometimes poignant life.
Written by David Henry Hwang, we follow a fictionalised version of the playwright – DHH (the brilliant Shan-Ree Tan). After a very public attempt to ensure a Broadway production of Miss Saigon is authentically cast, DHH mistakenly hires a white actor (Adam Marks, a superbly frustrating portrait of white privilege with puppy-dog eyes) to play the Asian lead in his next play.