Robert DuSold

There’s a lot I don’t know about the Broadway show “Maybe Happy Ending”.

I know it won the Tony this year for Best Musical.

I know last week was its highest grossing ever.

I know it’s a smaller scale musical, and from the press stuff it looked like a love story with 2 robots, or something like that, as the leads.

I thought the makeup was cool.

I’ve met the book writer, up and coming guy.. and I know the director has a Broadway pedigree.

I know several friends who’ve seen it and loved it.. they found it charming and original.

Yesterday, as I was perusing the sosh, I saw a post from one of the dearest, simply great guys in the biz sharing an open letter from BD Wong:

This is a letter written by BD WONG that reflects how many of us in the AANHPI theatre community are feeling right now about the casting of a caucasian actor in Maybe Happy Ending on Broadway, a show that is set in Korea and is currently cast with an AANHPI cast. BD is planning to send this letter to The NY Times and has asked if he could acquire a list of names who believe in this as well. If you would like to sign this letter, please let me know in the comments and I will share your name to be included. If you do not agree, that is absolutely your right. But please read and consider how it would feel if producers suddenly decided that Sarah or Coalhouse in Ragtime were cast without regard to race. 

I was thinking about this, and how all of the communities of diversity in theatre, tv, and film have to fight continually to be seen and heard, and how far we have come, but how far we still have to go. Thank you in advance for your consideration. 

From BD:

I got some old housekeeping with the New York Times. In 1992, playwright David Henry Hwang and I were the more well-known names on a list of Asian Americans protesting the casting of a white British actor, playing an Asian role, in yellowface, in a major musical scheduled for Broadway after running on the West End (whole plays are written about this, check it out). This sparked a pivotal conversation about Asians in the American Theater that continues today. It established fundamental, unacknowledged truths. It inspired change in the casting policies of that production, and generally raised the stature and visibility of Asian actors — “progress,” perhaps? Then, though, journalists were dismissive and lacked nuance in this area. A Times journalist called me on my home phone to haughtily challenge my motives for helping initiate this dialogue. Their disrespect and dismissiveness surprised, wounded, saddened me. Anyway, that was then. Today’s steady surge in Asian American visibility, again, feels like “progress…”

…until it doesn’t. 

Last week, the Broadway producers of MAYBE HAPPY ENDING announced that their Tony-winning hero, the charismatic Darren Criss, upon ending his run, will be replaced by Andrew Barth Feldman.

This essay concerns the fact that Mr. Criss is of Asian American descent, and Mr. Feldman is not.

It’s also about how a Broadway show can betray the community it supports at the drop of a top hat. 

Briefly, re Mr. Criss’ racial identity: if you believe an Asian person with two Asian parents is “more Asian” than an Asian person with one (etc.), this essay isn’t for you. We don’t gauge someone’s Asian-ness on a “gradient scale” in my house. As for “how Asian” an actor “reads on stage”? Don’t be shallow. Those who process race this way might have less exposure to it in their lives, understood. When one is open to the multi-racial-ness around us, one eventually encounters people expressing their racial identity diversely, but try not to label someone a “percentage” of something. Percentages are for comparing historical family facts. 

A simple statement to blow your mind: 

An Asian Person is, in fact, an Asian Person, “periodt.” There aren’t “degrees.”

It’s soul sucking to be explaining this today.

MAYBE HAPPY ENDING achieves something rare; it takes its audience somewhere special. Whence comes its enchantment?

I think the show mesmerizes partly because of its unique origin: it was created with Korean energy. Much of its development was Korean. Its original Korean production, years ago, was wildly successful. When it finally opened on Broadway, the story’s Korean location, sensibility, and its characters were preserved, unlike THE FULL MONTY or STEPPING OUT, two popular British properties set respectively in Manchester and North London, that were re-set, respectively, in Pittsburgh and Buffalo to make them more “relatable” here. MAYBE HAPPY ENDING proves good stories can be set everywhere; they don’t need a “baseball” production number to “cater to the locals.” (Instantly I can think of three American musicals that have baseball numbers, as well as one popular musical about baseball; this ain’t a stretch).

MAYBE HAPPY ENDING brought the American audience to Korea instead of American-izing itself. This felt revolutionary and subversive; bold and modern, and also felt like a gift. It sees Asian people. We can tell a Korean story, with Asian American actors, without people blinking, fainting, or demanding a refund. Transport us to Korea, as Meredith Willson took us to River City, Iowa (or Anatevka, or Brigadoon) without a Real ID. We boarded the train. We traveled together. When the conductor bellowed “…next station stop, River City, Iowa,” nobody looked at their ticket, yelped “OH MY GOD, I’M ON THE WRONG TRAIN!” and staggered up the aisle vomiting. Nobody in the MAYBE HAPPY ENDING audience does, either. We. All. Just. Go. To. Korea. Delighted and safe; excited and scared.

They made this Korean world, indicated by proper nouns and the names of cities. It’s crystal clear, folks: we’re in Korea.

It’s a colorful, romantic, futuristic, musical mural of Korea. 

Where the people are Korean people. 

Where the robots are Korean robots.  

Some say “robots know no race,” or fixate on (and labor to justify) what “robots” are or aren’t, sure, but MHE’s world actually supports the use of actors who’ll deliver us to that Korean place. In some ways, yeah, “it doesn’t matter” if Oliver “is Asian or not.” If he’s not, though, he’s gonna clash with the “Korea-verse.” In this world, written Korean language takes up visual space; a Korean man listens to American jazz crooners because they transport him. If you “recast” Hwaboon (Oliver’s trusty houseplant and silent companion) with a cactus and rename him “Dakota,” it would also disrupt this meticulous Korean world.

Again, advocating for representation, explaining any of this, is excruciating, exhausting, embarrassing, diminishing, depressing.

How can I make the yellowface issue clear for us? 

Start by removing all of that lovely Korean detail from the musical’s content and its production. Then, and not until then, can we talk about casting white people in it. 

The creators might bristle when an outsider proclaims what their show is/isn’t. I’m responding honestly to what they’ve made, expressing how counterintuitive it seems, given what they’re doing next.

Arguing something that’s already in motion; great. It’s seemingly moot, but this conversation is extremely important. Just a bunch of Asian people, gasp, Asian actors, feeling left out, feelings hurt?!

What can I say? We are left out. It is painful. It’s hardwired to real issues. All I can do to address the rage and exclusion that this summons is to confront it, hoping to open the eyes of those who haven’t yet learned the language of it.   

Team MHE will do what it pleases. I call foul because this decision is a hard slap in the face of both the Asian actor community and the Asian audience: the former thrives in spite of an incomprehensible, long-standing history of racism and exclusion. Don’t take the fallout of this announcement lightly.

Nobody acknowledges this, nobody changes anything, nobody even notices.

It’s dumbfounding that this exclusionary act (replacing an Asian actor vacating a role with a white actor) is announced, and then, in the next breath, it’s feebly characterized as “inclusive.” Casting a white actor signifies that “anyone can play it,” and “anyone” sounds soo “expansive.” This is a perverse way of mocking the notion that the marginalized need opportunities. It dismisses the statistical dominance of white actors in musical leading roles (MHE had been a glorious, rare exception to this). It ignores the brutal history of yellowface and appropriation. 

It also demonstrates a shocking tone-deafness with regards to its own optics.  

I’ve insight now as a writer, director, and producer that I hadn’t in 1992. I know nobody takes casting decisions lightly. This “pivot” retracts the validation and unprecedented celebration that MHE lent the Asian community. It’s agonizing to witness and to feel in my heart.

Making theater is a series of choices. This choice seems unaware of its affect on the community it excludes, with no understanding, even, that it is in fact excluding. It seems the decision-makers thought this might pass with little consequence. Unfortunately a community is left betrayed, it scrambles to mobilize. Ironically, long-built rage points to the very project that lifted up the community, and validated it right until last week’s announcement. 

As I write this, it’s as if no time has passed; as if nothing’s changed. As if no one learned anything from that racial dismissal and exclusion 33 years ago, as we now stand up to face this racial dismissal and exclusion. My Asian theater family has been sideswiped by this “turn of events.” Imagine a Broadway opening celebrating us so glitteringly, leading to its (our) historic success come awards season, then rotting like flowers left too long in the dressing room, making us question our faith in allies. We’re amazed how rapidly trust can dissolve. We’re devastated by the hollow and ill-thought explanations offered, deepening our invisibility. We’re not even worth concocting a decent-sounding excuse for. Maybe it’s nothing in the scheme of things to the MHE team, but it looms large, like so many steps backward, to us.

I don’t speak for all, but I can say Asian Actors, in all our glorious individuality, internal-diversity, talent, resilience, and hopeful idealism, don’t buy this. We don’t accept it. The reason we don’t accept it, frankly, is because by now we’ve “been to Korea.” We’ve been to the Korea that’s celebrated in the show that now eschews us. We know that what blossoms In That Korea is respect and validation. 

If anything’s different in 2025 than in 1992, it’s that this community is now painfully aware it deserves, at the very least, respect from this industry. We’re constantly fighting like hell for that respect, just like we did thirty-three years ago. This time, we have the evolved, unmitigated gall to know that we’re on the right side of history. Again. We’re incomprehensibly furious about this. We’re rabidly annoyed. We’re shellshocked and gobsmacked that we’re still brawling, like stray, malnourished street dogs, for even the most emaciated shreds of respect from y’all. Asian Actors once again enter the ring, alone, threatened by the notion of going back to Before Korea, Mother. The old “go back where you came from” shtick? I’m deeply ashamed to report: it’s still a thing, and it doesn’t feel at all as fun as the party we went to “In Korea.”

What it does feels like, though, is the diametrical opposite of “progress”. 

You deserve an award for getting through that.

Here’s a puppy

I didn’t know the leading man was Asian.

I’m certain the vast majority of theater goers didn’t either.

I never thought about it.

He looked like a robot. Not a Korean robot.

Just a robot.

So, here we are again in a racial social media bloodbath that could very easily close this show.. the last one that comes to mind is “The Great Comet”… which won the AEA Diversity Award while being pilloried for diverse casting by diverse people… most notably Cynthia Erivo.

It closed as a result of the ecosystem of grievance.

Anyway, I know I’m in the minority here it seems, but if there is a social media time capsule I hope in a hundred years people will look back at this time and read this and wonder what the fuck were people thinking?

As with all of these theatrical war zone open letters, I don’t doubt the sincerity of Mr. Wong, but I do question the hostility.

I now know that BD Wong is really really really angry.

I now know that Darren Criss has an Asian ethnic background, among other ethnicities cuz I googled.

So, in reading a lot of these open letters for the last several years, they seem to make some oblique points that require them to go unchallenged… or the mob will be unleashed.

I don’t care about that… I never really did…even after being the object of one. Ok, 2 I think. Maybe more.

I find this letter to be all over the place honestly.

Anyone who writes a post like this, or signs it or shares it has to know of the real potential it has for damaging the show.

Possibly to the point it closes.. and the very representation it seems to advocate for will just result in less of it.. and a shit ton of people unemployed.

And that would not be the producers fault.

In regards to this open letter, I have some thoughts and questions.

The first is, if we can find Asian people in time capsules in River City Iowa, Yonkers and Austria, it seems plausible a white(Jewish I presume) dude robot can find himself in Korea…

From what I’ve read, Criss’s replacement is married to the leading lady.. has anyone thought about the effect this stuff has on her? Or Criss, who is now a pawn in the racial war zone? Or his replacement?

How is it that white guys have written and directed this show and somehow have escaped the 23 and Me purity test?

What does white mean? Aren’t we all, at this point, very mixed ethnically? If it’s based on looks alone… once again I had no idea the leading man has an Asian background.

What does Asian mean?

If a black man was the replacement, would the outrage be the same?

I’m gonna sneak in here and answer that…no.

So if BIPOC is a bloc, does it end here?

Or does it just mean anything but white..which, lets face it, it has for quite a while now.

I think it would be wise for Actors Equity to release a study of various ethnicities and their demographic percentages in the union and how much they actually work… which is a significant part of representation.

From my experience in producing a show… it took me ten years to get it to a place of prominence at the Public Theater.

And quite a bit of money that I didn’t really have to produce it over the years.

I would say, if anyone wants a seat at the table to make decisions about someone else’s property, cough up a hundred grand and have at it.

The producers and creative staff have signed off on this replacement.. what gives you the right to risk nothing and demand anything?

It’s not your show.

Trust me, I have been the object of the diverse scorn and I still have those questions….

We are to the point that appeasing actors is more important than letting your art live and thrive.

And I think that turns off a lot of theatre goers and the public in general.

No matter what happens, this really great Tony winning piece is tarnished.. and audiences know it.

That will affect the future of it.

So many talk about agency and appropriation… I do believe this entire shebangle was hijacked from the leading man, and if he had a problem with the casting of his replacement, it is his right and his alone to speak about it.

Not BD Wong.