M. Butterfly hy David Henry Hwang. An Arts Club produc- tion at the Granville istand Stage directed by Bill Millerd. To Feb. 20. information and reservations: 687-1644,

‘WAS looking forward

with pleasure to last

week’s opening of David Henry Hwang’s multi (in- cluding Tony)-award win- ning play at the Arts Club.

A play that | had neither seen nar read had already spun a . seductive web of intrigue based on reputation and word of mouth,

twish | could report that | fella

Martin Millerchip THEATRE REVIEW

willing victim to the silky charms of Hwang's shape-shifting plat, but I did not.

The writing is indeed complex and provoking. .

An imaginative reversal of Puc- cini’s Madame Gutterfly, the play

Butterfly

is, on one fevel, a remarkable in- dictment of racial stereotyping and the western “rape” of the Orient.

Paralleled with this theme of nz tional self-delusion (the rapist believes his victim ‘wants’! or “deserves it’) is a 20-year story af personal self-deception that is the tragic core of the play.

An insecure French diplomat, voted “east likely to be invited toa party” at schaol and married practically but lovelessty to an older woman, becomes pas- sionately obsessed svith a Chinese opera singer he meets in Beijing in 1960,

Found guilty in 1986 of spying for China, Gallimard re-examines from his small cell the events leading from that meeting to his

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We, his ‘ideal audience,”’ are. privy to Gallimard’s daily recre- ation of his “ideal woman” in

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. Photo Glen Erikson PERFECT. ORIENTAL BLISS? Allan Gray’s Gallimard seeks satisfaction at the hands of M. Lasheras Andaluz’ Song Liling in the Arts Ciub production. of David Henry Hwang’s award-winning . Play ff. Butterfly. . ._ -

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