Hwang, the first Asian-American playwright to have a play on Broadway, used this bizarre true story to explore both masculine attitudes towards women, and Western attitudes toward the East, and help us see the connection between the two. It is inspired by the true story of French diplomat Bernard Boursicot (in the play renamed Rene Gallimard) who passed state secrets to Chinese opera star Shi Pei Pu (Song Liling) whom he took for years to be his female lover, but was in fact a male spy. This seems an especially apt way of thinking about a play that is so much about the interplay between worldview and identity.

Did you see the original? How well do you know director Julie Taymor’s best work? Are you crazy about actor Clive Owen? How much you think that risk has paid off in the production running at the Cort Theater depends on who you are as a theatergoer. It was risky for playwright David Henry Hwang to tweak his career-making, Tony-winning play as extensively as he has done.

“M Butterfly” has returned to Broadway after 30 years, not so much revived as revised.

Butterfly wong chinese opera singer