M. Butterfly: With an Afterword by the Playwright

This was a very interesting play, based on historical fact, about a french man who falls in love with a Chinese diva. She becomes his mistress and stays so for twenty years, at the end of which he discovers that not only is she a spy for the Communist party, but is also a man. The writing is

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scintillating and intoxicating. The character of the Chinese diva is alluring and multi-dimensional. It's fascinating how the story parallels the opera Madame Butterfly, especially in the way that Gallimard, though he thinks he is similar to the womanizer Pinkerton, is actually more similar to Madame Butterfly herself. This play has a fascinating take on what Hwang calls the western Rape mentality towards the East. A fascinating and quick read that I highly recommend.

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Hwang’s play was written the same year the Supreme Court upheld a law criminalizing homosexual sodomy. (It was performed a couple of years later.) It’s the story of a French diplomat who fell in love with a Chinese opera singer, who for twenty years he believed was a woman. (He never knew that

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the women’s roles were played by male singers in traditional Beijing opera.) It’s about Orientalism and sexual myths, cultural divides and gender divides, the lies we tell ourselves about other people in order to tell ourselves lies about ourselves, and it felt (sadly) fresh and true over twenty years later.

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Brilliant play. Blah movie. But both are worth getting into. The story is compelling and brings up a number of good points about the faults of Western, white male-dominated culture. Post-colonialism at its best and awfully funny dialogue.

White male privilege will f*ck you up!

There are a couple awkward lines and sometimes it feels like Hwang is being far too obvious with the themes of the play, not letting the audience work them out for themselves, but overall, M Butterfly is a fascinating study of racial and gender stereotypes in

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an East vs West battle of sorts. It's also an interesting puzzle to work out, with both leads providing their subjective view-points of events, distorting the truth to show the fantasies they had created. It openly embraces its theatricality, which is one of the reasons the movie is so disappointing in my opinion; it focused too much on realism which made it feel so awkward. The incorporation of the actual opera Madame Butterfly into the play provides an interesting mirror to the characters's situation, although the parallels do veer dangerously close to melodrama in one or two scenes. Obviously, the premise is one that may require a real suspense of disbelief for some - although it is based on a true story - but that feels natural to the play itself. Rene has spent so long building up his perfect fantasy, living out Madame Butterfly with his own apparently submissive beautiful Chinese woman, and he's desperate to hold onto it, even in the face of destruction. It's a play that would require a strong director and actors to match. Highly recommended.

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I really enjoyed this play. My friend recommended it to me, saying, "It's about this gay guy..." Since this wasn't a very detailed description, I wasn't sure what to expect, but once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. I literally could not stop until I got to the end and once I did I

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just wanted to start all over again. This is an amazing play. In actuality it's not about a gay guy at all, but my disappointed induced by this realization didn't last long considering what a fantastic read the actual story was. The plot is great, the language is great, and I would definitely recommend this book.

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Most people I talk to when discussing a book/play that has been made into a film, will invariably say to me ' the book was better'. I don't know if people have said this about M Butterfly, but if they said it, I don't agree. Had I read this before I saw the film with Jeremy Irons, I most likely

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would not have even finished it. I would have preferred it as a novel or a biography, not a play.

The film is wonderful, and the customs fantastic and colorful. The play is a dull gray in comparison.

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This play was better than I thought it was going to be. The plot got really interesting in the second Act. I do admit at times it was hard to tell what aspects were from the Operas they were discussing and the actual play I was reading. This play brought up some touchy topics and I thought it was

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wonderful.

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Better than I expected, but the summary in the beginning ruined the plot for me.

FANTASTIC. A cutting and innovative interrogation of "Orientalist" stereotypes, using a real-life story and the opera *Madame Butterfly.* I am pretty sure this is the play I will be teaching this fall.