What's New on the Rialto

David Henry Hwang and Wayman Wong

1990: Kevin Gee, who worked in Jadin Wong's talent agency, tipped me off to the behind-the-scenes casting drama at Miss Saigon. Mackintosh had this London hit musical that was a reworking of Giacomo Puccini's 1904 opera, Madama Butterfly. Instead of a geisha falling for a U.S. naval officer in Japan, Miss Saigon relocated the story to 1970s Vietnam, where Kim, an Asian bar girl, falls for Chris, an American Marine.

In Miss Saigon, the manipulative Eurasian character of the Engineer tries to pass himself off as Kim's brother, hoping to emigrate with her, so he needs to look Asian. Pryce, who's Caucasian, wore prosthetics to make his eyes look more "slanted." Even though Pryce won acclaim and an Olivier Award for his performance, many Asian-American actors were outraged and compared his use of yellow face to the outdated and racist practice of blackface. B.D. Wong, a Tony winner for M. Butterfly, fumed: "It's ridiculous to have a Caucasian actor with taped eyelids play an Asian."

Anyway, I tried to talk to Mackintosh and Pryce to get their side, but was told they were unavailable for comment. So my story ran July 11, 1990: "Musical angers Asian actors." And all hell broke loose. Vincent Liff, the casting director for Miss Saigon, wrote to Equity claiming that a worldwide search had been made to find an Asian man who could play the Engineer, but none could be found. Mackintosh said if Equity did not approve Pryce as the Engineer, he would cancel the Broadway run. So the heat was on Equity, which relented, and Pryce reprised his role, minus the prosthetics.

After Pryce was approved, a Mackintosh spokesman admitted that no worldwide search was made to find an Asian guy to play the Engineer and "it was unfortunate and regrettable if any misunderstanding has arisen." Oops. It was as Equity suspected: Mackintosh wanted Pryce all along. Meanwhile, Asian men had been slandered for lacking the talent and weren't given an equal opportunity to audition. They lost a rare star-making part that might've won one of them a Tony, the same way the role of Kim won an unknown Lea Salonga her Tony. Alvin Lum, a Broadway veteran then in City of Angels, said good Asian roles are scarce: "We fought [yellow face] 20 years ago. Non-Asians get the lead roles, and we get the crumbs."

1991: The titanic Tony Awards battle that season was between The Will Rogers Follies and Miss Saigon. And The Will Rogers Follies took the top prize of Best Musical, but Pryce and Salonga won their Tonys for Miss Saigon. Pryce entered the press room in good spirits. I walked up to him, congratulated him on his win and then introduced myself: "I'm Wayman Wong from the New York Daily News." Pryce's mood suddenly soured: "Oh, so you're the one [who broke the story]! You have no idea how angry you made me!" I responded: "I only reported the story. I didn't create it." Pryce snapped: "Why didn't you ever talk to me?" I told him that I tried to, but his publicist said he wasn't available. Pryce shot back: "Well, we'll have to sit down and have a long talk." Fine by me. A couple days later, I reached out to set up the interview ... and never heard from Pryce again.

2007: I got a call at the New York Daily News, and a friend asked me: "Did you know you're in Yellow Face, the new David Henry Hwang play at the Public?" No! WTF? I dimly recall Hwang once asking me for copies of my Miss Saigon stories, but I didn't remember any talk about a new play. I actually knew Hwang a little, years before I moved to New York in 1988. He once led a playwriting workshop and read my first play, Whiskey Chicken, a 1990 comedy-drama that would star Dennis Dun and become a hit for the Asian American Theatre Company in San Francisco.

Anyway, I scurried to see Yellow Face. Indeed, it was a new comedy inspired by the Miss Saigon casting controversy. In it, Hoon Lee played a fictionalized version of Hwang, who mistakenly casts a white actor (Noah Bean) in an Asian role in his own play. Since Hwang was a major critic of Pryce's yellow-face casting in Miss Saigon, that led to ironic and comic chaos. So I sat in the audience waiting to hear my name or see my character. Nothing! I then emailed Hwang and asked: "Was I in your new play?" Hwang said I was and had a few lines, but the show was running long, so I got cut during the early previews. Bummer! My disappointment was that the play now made it look like The New York Times broke the story, when, in fact, I did. But that's showbiz. Still, I enjoyed the show, which went on to win an Obie and was a 2007 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

2014: Mackintosh celebrated the 25th anniversary of Miss Saigon with a new revival in London. It starred Eva Noblezada as Kim, and Jon Jon Briones, an Asian-American, as the Engineer. Each received rave reviews, and Briones got an Olivier Award nomination. And in an interview with the Telegraph, Mackintosh now confessed that he believes his biggest mistake in Miss Saigon was not foreseeing how much of an issue the casting of Pryce in the Eurasian role of the Engineer would prove in New York: "I said it was a storm in an Oriental tea-cup, thinking I was being clever. I was actually being stupid." He now accepts that those who argued that the character should be played by an actor of Asian descent had a valid point.

2017: Miss Saigon returned to Broadway, with Noblezada and Briones reprising their roles. They each earned a Theatre World Award for their New York debuts, and Briones also got a Drama Desk nomination. But on the morning of the 2017 Tony nominations, Noblezada was nominated, but Briones was not. The irony: A white actor in yellow face could WIN a Tony as the Engineer, but an Asian-American one could not even get NOMINATED.

2024: Since Miss Saigon opened in London 35 years ago, it has been staged in at least 25 countries and been translated into 12 languages. At 4,092 performances, the original New York production is the 14th longest-running Broadway musical and has employed tons of Asian-American performers. Still, it's criticized for its racial stereotypes. Kimber Lee wrote a satirical 2023 farce called "untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play," which got raves in England.

As for the legacy of Miss Saigon's casting controversy, Hwang recently addressed it on Patrick Pacheco's CUNY-TV show, "All the Moving Parts": "It was the first major yellow-face protest in American history. We lost the battle, but won the war. Pryce wound up playing the part and winning the Tony. Yay for him. He's a perfectly good actor. But Mackintosh also said [that after Pryce left], the Engineer would always be cast with an Asian actor. [That sent the message] if any [future] producers were going to do yellow face, there would be a lot of trouble, so it worked out."

As for Yellow Face, directed again by Leigh Silverman, it will wrap up its Broadway run on November 24. It stars Daniel Dae Kim (from TV's "Lost" and "Hawaii Five-O") and Ryan Eggold (from TV's "New Amsterdam"). But how did this 2006 madcap farce about mistaken racial identity play in 2024? Happily, critics raved about the comic chemistry between Kim and Eggold, as well as its ensemble, featuring Francis Jue. And Jesse Green of the New York Times made it a Critic's Pick and said it still deals "powerfully and hilariously" with cultural identity and race, which are relevant as ever.

Before Yellow Face began previews, I emailed Hwang and joked that it wasn't too late to restore my character as the reporter who broke the Miss Saigon story. No such luck! He turned it into a tighter, one-act play. But Hwang didn't forget me. When Yellow Face was published, he graciously mentioned me in the acknowledgments. And when I asked him to autograph my copy, he wrote: "For Wayman, thanks for making this play possible."

(Wong has written for Talkin' Broadway, Playbill, BroadwayWorld and the New York Daily News, and is an award-winning playwright.)