NEW YORK (AP) — The Broadway rom-com “Maybe Happy Ending” is not in a really glad place nowadays. A casting controversy threatens to dampen the present’s post-Tony Award-winning glow.
The strife started when producers of the South Korea-based musical selected to forged Andrew Barth Feldman because the male lead when authentic star Darren Criss steps away, in impact changing an Asian actor with a white one.
That prompted denunciations by the Asian American Performers Motion Coalition, the Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists and distinguished Asian American artists resembling Conrad Ricamora, Ruthie Ann Miles, Kay Sibal, Jose Llana, Kay Sibal and BD Wong, who grew to become the primary Asian actor to win a Tony in 1988 for “M. Butterfly.”
The Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists has known as on producers to recast the lead with an actor of Asian descent, calling the casting of Feldman an “affront to our community” and a “slap in the face.”
“This was an Asian-driven show with an Asian American cast, and it was like a breath of fresh air to all of us,” says Lily Tung Crystal, inventive director of the East West Gamers and a consortium board member. “This was the show that would bring us into the next stage of the conversation. But instead, we feel like we’re going backwards.”
On-line feedback
Greater than 2,400 folks have signed an open letter from Wong asking the musical’s creators to rethink their casting alternative. The letter has attracted the signatures of two-time Tony winner Donna Murphy, Tony winner Ali Stroker, Golden Globe winner Awkwafina, “Saturday Night Live” star Bowen Yang, actor Anthony Rapp and director Leigh Silverman.
The response on social media has been tough, with many flatly telling Feldman to drop out, with one writing: “You know the role should go to an Asian person. You know it. And the longer you stay silent, the more damage you do to your reputation.” One other joked Feldman would quickly be seen as Mufasa in “The Lion King.” Neither Feldman nor the present responded when contacted by The Related Press.
Dan Bacalzo, an affiliate professor of theater at Florida Gulf Coast College, compares it to the whitewashing controversy round Scarlett Johansson when she was forged as a cyborg within the manga-inspired “Ghost in the Shell.”
“In the end, it comes down to opportunity,” he says. “With fewer leading roles possible for Asian American actors, why cast a show that has an established opportunity for them with a non-Asian actor?”
The controversy comes 36 years after the casting of a white actor because the Eurasian lead in “Miss Saigon” prompted an analogous backlash, which mockingly, was the topic of a revival of “Yellow Face” this previous season. It is also set towards a backdrop of the Trump administration’s try to tear up initiatives for range, fairness and inclusion.
What is the present about?
Set in a futuristic model of Seoul, “Maybe Happy Ending” is a love story between two helper robots, Oliver and Claire, who’re deemed out of date. It started being developed in South Korea in 2014 and has been a success there; the Broadway model is led by Criss and Helen J. Shen with a predominantly Asian forged.
Criss, who grew to become the primary Asian American actor to win the lead actor Tony in a musical within the function, can be out for 9 weeks beginning Tuesday. He introduced he would return to the present Nov. 4, however the harm was executed.
The present’s creators, Will Aronson and Hue Park, mentioned in an announcement that they wrote Oliver and Claire as androids created by a world firm, however understood that the “makeup of our opening night cast became a meaningful and rare point of visibility.”
“With ‘Maybe Happy Ending,’ we wanted to write a show in which every role could be played by an Asian performer, but without the intention that the robot roles always would be,” they mentioned.
Critics level out that the script and path illustrate an Asian-presenting lead actor is essential to the plot and rue that producers leaned on the Asian American neighborhood to get it on Broadway.
“For the creators and producers to then turn around and say, ‘Oh, thank you for the help and now we’re going to go outside the community,’” says Tung Crystal. “It’s a slap in the face in many ways.”
Hye Received Kim, an assistant professor of English at Kennesaw State College, argues that the controversy is an instance of the tensions and transformations that always happen when musical theater turns into transnational.
“It’s multilayered. It’s complicated. It’s complex and you can’t just say that there’s a single answer to this,” she says. “I really hope that the two parties meet and talk because I know that everyone wants this musical to do well.”
A season of firsts, however…
Along with Criss’ win, theater-makers of Asian or Pacific Island descent had a smashing 2025 Tonys, with Francis Jue profitable for greatest featured actor in a play, Nicole Scherzinger profitable greatest lead in a musical and Marco Paguia getting the Tony for greatest orchestrations. Daniel Dae Kim grew to become the primary Asian nominee in the perfect main actor in a play class within the Tonys’ 78-year historical past.
However industry-wide the numbers are much less buoyant. In accordance with the info from The Asian American Performers Motion Coalition, solely 3.7% of all actors on Broadway are of Asian descent, in a metropolis the place Asians make up 14.5% of the inhabitants. Asian American actors secured simply 2.8% of all lead roles in musicals; white actors nabbed 52.8%.
“When the playing field is not level, then we should retain some space — some representation — within the roles that represent our own community,” says Tung Crystal. “There are other Asian American actors who are as talented.”
The controversy has doubly impacted Shen, an Asian American actor making her Broadway debut and who can also be courting and dwelling with Feldman, calling him “perfect” for the function. “This has been an immensely challenging moment,” she mentioned in an Instagram submit.
“Every perspective on this situation contains truth. This conversation must be had, and it’s not the last time I’ll be talking about it or amplifying other people’s perspectives here,” she wrote.
‘Grace and kindness’
Telly Leung, a Broadway veteran who has criticized the casting of Feldman, responded to Shen’s submit by acknowledging she has been “put in a very difficult position,” including “these conversations are challenging — but necessary — and I agree with you that we need to have them with grace and kindness for each other.”
Michael R. Jackson, the playwright behind the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “A Strange Loop,” defended the musical, Feldman and its makers in a Fb submit, decrying what he known as “a bourgeois racial tribunal.”
“I do know what it is like to be a lone voice of dissent against a bored and bloodthirsty social media mob,” he wrote. “They are good people and artists who deserve your support. Especially against viral cry-bullying like this. Especially in times like these.”
Leslie Ishii, the inventive director of Perseverance Theatre in Alaska and a consortium board member, says she has compassion for Feldman, at the same time as she asks for him to step apart.
“That actor is being forced to be in that place knowing there’s controversy, to take on an identity that is not theirs. They’re being forced to be complicit with systemic racism, and then, in turn, the actors in that cast are being forced to be complicit,” she says. “It’s a harmful dynamic all around, on every level.”
