Will Broadway Miss Saigon?

By RICHARD CORLISS

Jesse Helms must be in pig paradise. Last year the Senator from North Carolina huffed and tut-tutted about state-supported pornography until a cowed Congress mandated that artists sign a purity oath before receiving federal funds. Now he gets to watch the sorry spectacle of a few theater people conspiring to prevent an actor from plying his craft. With all the best intentions, they are doing Helms' proscriptive work for him and proving that you don't have to be a philistine to get the censor's itch; in the process they threaten to deprive many actors of good jobs and the American public of seeing the world's hottest show.

The trouble began when British producer Cameron Mackintosh announced that Jonathan Pryce would reprise his starring role in the Broadway edition of Miss Saigon, the London blockbuster musical that sets the Madama Butterfly story in the Vietnam War. Pryce had won an Olivier Award as the French-Vietnamese pimp who helps effect a poignant reunion between an American soldier and the Vietnamese girl he left behind.

But the casting of an English actor in a Eurasian part affronted some Asian Americans, including playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly). Last week the board of Actors' Equity -- a union representing 40,000 U.S. performers and maintaining a reciprocal arrangement with its British counterpart -- refused to grant Pryce permission to appear on Broadway because he is not Asian. So far, so predictable: Mackintosh was expected to take the matter to arbitration and win his case, while the protesters reaped some sympathy and publicity.

But the producer wouldn't play along. Angrily, Mackintosh declared that Equity had created "a poisonous atmosphere in which creativity and artistic freedom cannot function or survive." He then dealt the coup de grace: "If Equity is unwilling to take steps to ensure that reason and fairness prevail, then I have no choice but to cancel Miss Saigon." Gone, for the moment, were the other Saigon roles that would have employed 29 Asian and Asian-American actors. Frozen, for the nonce, was the record $25 million the show had banked in advance ticket sales. Like the event it put to music, Miss Saigon was becoming a no-win war with a high body count. And each combatant was ready to cut off his nose to spite his race.

The issue, tinged with prejudice and artifice, is as old as theater. In Shakespeare's day, Othello was acted by whites -- and Olivier played the Moor - in blackface in the 1960s. In old Hollywood, where nonwhites were nonstars, Caucasians often played Oriental roles. Marlon Brando kowtowed through The Teahouse of the August Moon; John Wayne did a Genghis Khan job on The Conqueror; no Chinese ever played Charlie Chan. As recently as 1984, Linda Hunt won an Oscar playing a half-Chinese man in The Year of Living Dangerously.

The point, then as now, was that stage and screen are places of sublime pretense where audiences can make believe that any actor is perfect for any role. A woman can play Hamlet (Sarah Bernhardt); a black man can play Shakespeare (Morgan Freeman as Petruchio, Denzel Washington as Richard III in Joseph Papp's Shakespeare series in New York City's Central Park). Some call it inspired casting. Others, like producer Dominick Balletta of the Pan Asian Repertory Theater, call it affirmative action. "Nontraditional casting was meant to create opportunities for actors of color," he says, "not to take jobs away from them."

Yet that is just what will happen if Mackintosh keeps his word. But greed -- or even common sense -- will surely rescue this farce. "There's so much money involved," says producer Papp, "that I can hardly believe it won't be done here in some way." Already Equity and Mackintosh are making murmurs toward compromise. Miss Saigon is scheduled to open April 11. Before then, the warring sides will probably find a way to make nice, make a buck and save face.

With reporting by Janice C. Simpson/New York