Not only is this the most entertaining show to have played at the National’s temporary experimental space, it’s also one of the most sharply timed.
First seen at the Park Theatre in north London a year ago, David Henry Hwang’s play arrives here just as Miss Saigon returns to the West End. And it’s the furore from the first run of that mega-musical in 1990 — Asian-Americans protested when the entirely white Jonathan Pryce reprised his role as a French-Vietnamese pimp when the show went to Broadway — that gives the Chinese-American Hwang his starting point for a story that plays nimbly with notions of ethnic identity.
This is an autobiographical yet fanciful comedy about appearance and reality. Hwang himself, played by Kevin Shen, is