Amanda’s birthday is October 9th. What is Amanda’s favorite thing to do? You guessed it! Go to dinner and an show!
On Sunday night, Amanda’s birthday eve, she had tickets for us to see M Butterfly. I suggested we go to Bea in midtown. She took me there a year ago and I fell in love with the ambiance.
We were seated in the courtyard where they played old movies on the wall.
It was raining outside, but we were nice and dry under the glass roof (while still feeling like we were outside). 
The small plates were great
The cocktails were sweet.
Now a year later the food wasn’t quite as mind blowing as some of the places we’d discovered since, but I still loved the atmosphere.
M. Butterfly. Let me just take a moment to savor it. This show was so powerful. We saw the show on its second night in front of an audience. What drew Amanda to pick this one? It was directed by Julie Taymor (credits: The Lion King. Need I say more?) and featured Clive Owen (yup). I read the little blurb in the program. When she was first approached to direct the show, she wasn’t into it. Then she discovered that new facts had come to light about the true story since its original production in 1988. Our show was an updated, visually stimulating (I mean, obviously- if you know about her work) thought provoking show about issues that are still relevant today.
So Clive Owen is in a cell. He tells the story of how he got locked up A) because he has plenty of time on his hands and B) so he can figure out where he went wrong. As a French Diplomat, he and his wife are sent to China. He goes to a party where he falls in love-at-first-sight (as ya do in plays and movies, and real life too sometimes I guess) with this Chinese woman who sings the death song from Madam Butterfly. He talks to her after the performance and says that he loved it– she is such a perfect beautiful woman. Song (the singer) has a feisty reply– of course he loved it! He loves the story– it’s a white man’s fantasy! The Chinese are a feminine culture and men love to dominate it and take care of it. She says he likes the play because it’s about this white man coming in from his white world and rescuing his lady. He has to leave her but she loves him so much that she waits for him to come back, and when that can’t happen, she doesn’t go on with her life, she kills herself– for love (gag me). She invites him to come back the next week to see some real Chinese theatre. Clive comes back and visits backstage. Song appears to be a man who dresses as a lady– women aren’t allowed to perform in theatre. Song invites him back again. They end up in Song’s apartment and she is dressed like a lady. Clive is confused. Song tells him that she had three sisters and her father wanted a boy. So though she is really a girl, her mother told her father she was a boy. Her papers say she is a boy and she must act like a boy in public, but down there she is really a girl. It’s a bit of a stretch, but when you hear a trans person explain how their insides don’t match their outsides, the language is so similar.
They fall in love and have an affair. We discover that Song is telling Clive’s government secrets to the communists in order to justify their relationship– she’s a spy. Clive starts to get suspicious. He tells Song he wants to see her naked out in the light (they do it in the dark). She panics and tells him she’s pregnant. She goes away to have the baby. He gets sent back to France. After eight years he sends for Song, rescuing her. The Chinese took the baby. She still feeds his secrets to the Chinese, though he’s running out of secrets when he gets fired from his diplomat job. He gets accused and convicted of espionage. In court he learns that Song is really a man. He’s devastated and confused. Now we’ve met up in time with him sitting in the prison cell trying to figure out how he got there. It’s based on a true story (like I said; had to say it again) and so closely parallels the plot of Madam Butterfly (and hence, Miss Saigon).
Right?! So many things. It’s hard to be trans in today’s society. Can you even imagine what that would be like when it’s illegal? To feel such a strong need to be who you are even though it’s so against the rules? How much was Song in love and how much was she manipulating him? and HOW DID HE NOT KNOW SHE WAS A MAN DOWN THERE? Other characters in the play asked that question, which I appreciated. They broke the 4th wall a couple of times in a way that I just loved. In the court room, the judge asked Song how did you fool him? Song said, I told him what he wanted to hear. The judge was like, no really. Seriously. How did you fool him? We did it in the dark. I did most of the work. You want me to give you a play by play? Yes.
I love stories where there isn’t a clear bad guy. Was Clive’s character a victim? Would we feel less sympathetic if the character was played by someone we didn’t inherently like before we even walked in the theatre? Was Song bad because she manipulated him? Do we sympathize because we can see that she was desperate and was just doing what she needed to do to survive in the moment?
The sets were great. Julie was inspired by Chinese puzzle boxes and Japanese Bunraku (a whole bunch of screens would flip, flip down and turn around like Roman shades or Venetian blinds). When we saw it, the panels weren’t very secure. It was a little distracting. When they get that figured out, the show will be perfect.
Gender, cultural differences, male/female relationships, how much reality do we not see when we’re in love, how much manipulation can be justified if it’s done for love– such an awesome night of theatre.