In the early 1960s, a French diplomat stationed in Beijing fell in love with a Chinese actress, and they began an affair in Paris and Beijing that lasted for twenty years. They also engaged in international espionage – she was a spy to whom he passed official information. During their trial for treason in 1986, it came out that the woman was an undercover agent in more ways than one: she was a man in drag, a fact which the Frenchman (imprisoned in Paris) still refuses to accept.
Playwright David Henry Hwang read one sentence about the trial in the New Yorker and a short article in the New York Times and immediately became intrigued with the story. The result of his interest is the play M. Butterfly, which stars John Lithgow as Gallimard, the French diplomat, and B. D. Wong as the Chinese spy. The production is directed by John Dexter, perhaps best-known for staging the original production of Peter Shaffer's Equus, as well as the recent Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie starring Jessica Tandy and Amanda Plummer. But Dexter's considerable experience directing opera – his production of Poulenc's Dialogue of the Carmelites is a staple of the Metropolitan Opera repertoire – has also been a major asset in taking on M. Butterfly. As the title suggests, Hwang's play, besides taking its basic storyline from actual events, intimately draws on the music and the myth of Puccini's most famous opera.
"In my version, I've dovetailed the true story with the plot of Madame Butterfly," says the playwright. "The opera is the fantasy that binds together a lot of Gallimard's perceptions of events. Although it's a great opera, Madame Butterfly contains a lot of misperceptions about the East, particularly as they relate to Asian women. Consequently, the opera is first his ally in this romance, and by the end of the play he realizes he's been betrayed by it. The Frenchman at the beginning perceives himself to be Pinkerton and the Chinese actress to be Butterfly. At the end, he discovers that the situation was the reverse – the Chinese spy exploited for love, and the Frenchman fell in love and therefore was sacrificed by it.
In such plays as F.O.B. (Fresh Off the Boat), The Dance and the Railroad, and Family Devotions, which were all produced at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Hwang has dealt with the conflicts between recent immigrants and thoroughly assimilated American-born Chinese. But he has taken on a broader canvas with M. Butterfly, which he calls a revisionist version of Madame Butterfly.
Even considering the lengths the spy went through to deceive him, how could the diplomat continue to believe that he was living with a woman? "I think there's a certain amount of mystery that has to be retained," says the playwright with a soft chuckle, figuratively drawing a fan in front of his face. "There's a certain amount of calculation on the part of the spy. The Chinese actress said in the trial that the Frenchman never saw her completely naked. But I, like everyone else, have to believe that after twenty years he must have known on some level and chosen the fantasy over the reality.