‘Yellow Face’ Review: Daniel Dae Kim Leads a Witty, Powerful Broadway Staging of David Henry Hwang’s Comedy
variety.comDaniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic Playing the character of “DHH,” the actor Daniel Dae Kim begins “Yellow Face,” the new production of David Henry Hwang’s play, standing within a box, from which he promptly strides out.
It’s a crisp and clear visual metaphor in a production hardly short on them (the two onstage boxes rotate to conjure the various locations DHH recollects over the course of the play).
And it’s a statement of intent, too. “Yellow Face,” produced on Broadway for the first time after an initial Off Broadway run in 2007, might be the prolific Hwang’s magnum opus, but it’s also wily, wry, and slippery.
It resists classification practically to its final moments, even as it builds to a climax of startling power. Here, Kim — an actor likely best known for TV’s “Lost” — narrates his character’s recollections of a turbulent time in his artistic and personal life; the play chronicles DHH’s unpleasant experience of serving as a voice on a political issue whose complexities seem to evade his grasp.
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