Yesterday, I caught the matinee performance of Anything Goes now playing at the Stephen Sondheim (formerly Henry Miller) theater. The Sondheim theater, refurbished and modernized in 2005, is a sleek, comfortable venue. The 2011 Tony Award-winning revival is a richly crafted production, and the leads and supporting cast delivered polished performances. Sutton Foster, playing Reno Sweeney, justified her reputation as a top Broadway star. Foster impressed as a musical theater actress at the top of her game with a demanding display of her acting, singing, and dancing triple-threat abilities.
And oh, by the way, Anything Goes is racist. Andrew Cao and Raymond J. Lee portray a pair of newly Christian-converted Chinese gamblers named "Luke" and "John" ("Ching" and "Ling" in the original 1934 production). Luke and John are early-20th-century Chinese caricatures with stereotyped garb, speech, and behavior, and serve as comic foils for the non-Asian main characters. In Luke and John's final scene, they are duped into giving their Chinese clothes to cellmates Moonface Martin and Billy Crocker, so they in turn can act out the final racist wedding scene. Raymond J. Lee's John, in particular, is a painful display of yellow face (our version of black face).
It's bad enough when non-Asians or non-American Asians perpetuate anti-Asian racism in American popular culture, but it's disgusting when our Asian American brothers and sisters actively participate in betraying their own. I don't understand how Raymond J. Lee can look himself in the mirror after his nightly betrayal of Asian men. Maybe he's paid a lot. Maybe Asian actors are grateful for any stage role, no matter how demeaning, that's set aside for Asian actors. Maybe Lee can't afford to turn down a job on a top Broadway show. Maybe Lee, who is Korean, rationalizes that he's insulting Chinese men every day rather than Korean men.
Eric
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