Daniel Dae Kim Returning To Broadway In David Henry Hwang’s ‘Yellow Face’

Greg Evans
·6 min read

Daniel Dae Kim will return to Broadway this fall in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of David Henry Hwang’s comedy Yellow Face, to be directed by Tony Award nominee Leigh Silverman (Violet).

The production marks the Broadway premiere of Hwang’s play, an Obie Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist that originated in 2007 at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum and subsequently opened that year Off Broadway at the Joseph Papp Public Theater.

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The production, announced today as part of the Roundabout’s 2024-2025 season, will begin performances this September at the Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theatre. Kim made his Broadway debut as the King of Siam in Lincoln Center’s Tony-winning 2017 production of The King and I. The Lost actor next be seen as the villainous Fire Lord Ozai in Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender, premiering in February.

The production of Yellow Face is among a Roundabout line-up announced today that also includes the Broadway debut of playwright Sanaz Toossi, whose acclaimed play English begins performances in December; a new, jazz-influenced reinterpretation of The Pirates of Penzance, adapted by Rupert Holmes and starring Ramin Karimloo (Funny Girl) and David Hyde Pierce (Frasier); and an Off Broadway production of Meghan Kennedy’s The Counter, directed by David Cromer (Prayer for the French Republic, The Band’s Visit).

See the entire line-up below.

The season will be the Roundabout’s first under Interim Artistic Director Scott Ellis, who succeeds the company’s late, longtime leader Todd Haimes, who died last April. The 2024-25 season also will be the first in the Roundabout’s Broadway home since the venue’s renaming from the American Airlines Theatre to the Todd Haimes Theatre.

“In planning the season – my first as Interim Artistic Director – it was important to me to remain steadfast to Roundabout’s mission, and to Todd’s vision for this extraordinary company,” Ellis said in a statement. “I believe this line-up is one that he would have been proud of, as we bring together a group of exceptional artists to stage these works – both classic and new.”

Ellis said the season will close with The Pirates of Penzance reimagining, which began as a small in-house reading prior to the Covid pandemic and was further developed in a benefit concert last season.

In Yellow Face, Kim will play the lead character based on its author Hwang (M. Butterfly) in a story inspired by the “yellowface” controversy that surrounded the 1991 Miss Saigon Broadway casting of white British actor Jonathan Price as musical’s Eurasian pimp character called the Engineer.

Also included in the Roundabout’s season is the Off Broadway world premiere production of Bess Wohl’s Liberation, directed by Whitney White and set to begin performances in January 2025.

Here is the Roundabout’s 2024-2025 season announced today, with descriptions and synopses provided by the theater company (an additional production for Roundabout Underground will be announced at a later date; information on all shows including dates, casting, creative teams, and on-sale dates will be announced soon):

YELLOW FACE
September 2024 at the Todd Haimes Theatre on Broadway

Tony Award winner and three-time Pulitzer finalist David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) will make his Roundabout debut with the Broadway premiere of Yellow Face, his hilarious is-he-or-isn’t-he comedy of identity, show business, and (perhaps) autobiography. Starring Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) as “DHH” and directed by Tony nominee Leigh Silverman (Violet).

Inspired by real events, the playwright’s fictionalized doppelgänger protests yellowface casting in Miss Saigon, only to mistakenly cast a white actor as the Asian lead in his own play. This Obie Award-winning and Pulitzer finalist play is a laugh-out-loud farce about the complexities of race.

THE COUNTER
September 2024 at the Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center Off Broadway

Every morning at the local diner in a small town, a waitress refills a regular’s coffee. An unlikely friendship develops and keeps him coming back for more. But when he asks for a shocking favor, it brings to light both of their deepest secrets. The Counter is a funny, surprising, and moving meditation on the everyday connections that can change our lives.

After the success of Too Much, Too Much, Too Many and Napoli, Brooklyn, playwright Meghan Kennedy debuts her next Roundabout commission, The Counter. Directed by Tony Award winner David Cromer (The Band’s Visit).

ENGLISH
December 2024 at the Todd Haimes Theatre on Broadway

Roundabout brings English, by Sanaz Toossi, home to Broadway, after its world premiere co-production with Atlantic Theater Company. Knud Adams (Primary Trust) once again directs this Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the universal foibles of language and miscommunication.

The comedy unfolds in an Iranian classroom where adult English learners practice for their proficiency exam. As they leapfrog through a linguistic playground, their wildly different dreams, frustrations, and secrets come to light. Can they overcome the limits of language to discover what they really want to say?

LIBERATION
January 2025 at the Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center Off Broadway

From Tony Award nominee Bess Wohl (Grand Horizons) comes Liberation, directed by Roundabout’s inaugural directing fellow and Associate Artist, Whitney White (If I Forget, Marvin’s Room).

It’s 1970: somewhere in Ohio, six women meet on a basement basketball court, determined to shake up their lives and change the world. Fifty years later, one of their daughters tries to understand where things fell apart. A provocative, wildly theatrical world premiere that poses vital questions about friendship, legacy, and the true meaning of liberation.

THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE
April 2025 at the Todd Haimes Theatre on Broadway

Ramin Karimloo and David Hyde Pierce lead the crew as the “The Pirate King” and “W.S. Gilbert & Major General” in this must-see Roundabout reimagining of The Pirates of Penzance. Scott Ellis (Doubt; Kiss Me, Kate) directs and Warren Carlyle (Harmony; Kiss Me, Kate) choreographs with a hilarious new adaptation by Rupert Holmes (The Mystery of Edwin Drood), musical direction by Joseph Joubert (Caroline, or Change), and orchestrations by Joubert and Daryl Waters (Memphis).

Gilbert & Sullivan’s pirate ship docks in New Orleans in this jazzy-bluesy vision of the crowd-pleasing classic, in an outrageously clever romp sizzling with Caribbean rhythms and French Quarter flair. With the tongue-twisting Major-General, the rabble-rousing Pirate King, newly imagined young lovers, daring daughters, footloose pirates and fleet-footed police, there’s a shipload of musical comedy delights on board to dazzle first-timers and G&S aficionados alike.

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