M Butterfly

David Henry Hwang's beautiful, heartrending play featuring an afterword by the author - winner of a 1988 Tony Award for Best Play and nominated for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize

Based on a true story that stunned the world, "M. Butterfly" opens in the cramped prison cell where diplomat Rene Gallimard is being held captive by the French government--and by his own illusions. In the darkness of his cell he recalls a time when desire seemed to give him wings. A time when Song Liling, the beautiful Chinese diva, touched him with a love as vivid, as seductive--and as elusive--as a butterfly.

How could he have known, then, that his ideal woman was, in fact, a spy for the Chinese government--and a man disguised as a woman? In a series of flashbacks, the diplomat relives the twenty-year affair from the temptation to the seduction, from its consummation to the scandal that ultimately consumed them both. But in the end, there remains only one truth: Whether or not Gallimard's passion was a flight of fancy, it sparked the most vigorous emotions of his life.

Only in real life could love become so unreal. And only in such a dramatic tour de force do we learn how a fantasy can become a man's mistress--as well as his jailer. "M. Butterfly "is one of the most compelling, explosive, and slyly humorous dramas ever to light the Broadway stage, a work of unrivaled brilliance, illuminating the conflict between men and women, the differences between East and West, racial stereotypes--and the shadows we cast around our most cherished illusions.

"M. Butterfly" remains one of the most influential romantic plays of contemporary literature, and in 1993 was made into a film by David Cronenberg starring Jeremy Irons and John Lone.