“M. Butterfly”
Written by David Henry Hwang
Showing: BoHo Theatre at Heartland Studio, 7016 N. Glenwood Ave., through April 20.
Tickets: $20
Contact: (773) 791-2393; www.bohotheatre.com

By Web Behrens

Contributing writer

If “M. Butterfly” weren’t based on a real-life story, you’d laugh it off the stage: David Henry Hwang’s 1988 Tony-anointed best play unveils a French diplomat’s 20-year affair with a Chinese actress—an affair that ends horribly when his lover is revealed not only to be a Communist spy but also a man. If ever a work of art proves that truth is stranger than fiction, this is it.

It’s an odd bird, this show. On one hand, it’s a cogent reading of cultural conflicts and the dangers of oversimplifying the slippery nature of gender and sexuality. Upon latching onto the tale of intelligence officer (there’s an oxymoron!) Bernard Bouriscot, here renamed Rene Gallimard, Hwang smartly infuses into his fictionalized biography a critique of the Puccini opera “Madame Butterfly,” in which a Japanese woman gives up everything—including, finally, her own life—for the love of an unworthy American soldier. Yet as smart and accomplished as the play can be—full of role reversals and clever commentary—in other moments it also feels like Hwang lifted sections from some seething college thesis about the West’s pathetically biased attitudes about “the Orient.” That perspective isn’t off; it’s just sometimes presented rather clumsily.

But the Bohemian Theatre Ensemble is nothing if not ambitious. Certainly it takes supreme confidence to navigate this tightrope of a show, especially within the confines of the miniscule Heartland Studio. Director P. Marston Sullivan and set designer John Zuiker found inspiration in that restriction, having envisioned a multi-layered set with scrims that transform from Gallimard’s prison to Song’s love nest. And the seven-member cast, led by David Rhee and Jeremy Young, deliver confident performances, though at times they forget they’re playing, almost literally, in some audience members’ laps, which would allow for more subtlety. Another space-related observation amounts to nothing more than nitpicking, but here goes: Would someone please mend the costumes? It looks like some of the suits got caught between two sparring alley cats—an unnecessary distraction.

A willing audience can, of course, look past such small problems. They’ll be left then to grapple with the huge one, so central to the script—a conundrum exacerbated by the fact that Rhee is far too handsome and built (as he reveals during the show’s climax) to ever convincingly portray a woman, no matter how fine his acting might be. Then again, Gallimard’s foolishness and capacity for self-deception—encouraged by the West’s “Madame Butterfly”-encouraged view of the East—are key to the show’s themes, which BoHo’s production examines with sincere passion.