‘Yellow Face,’ Starring Daniel Dae Kim, Opening On Broadway in September

Daniel Dae Kim will star in the Broadway premiere of David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face next season.

The play, which is inspired by real events, follows a playwright protesting the casting of white actors playing Asian roles in Miss Saigon, and then mistakenly casting a white actor as an Asian lead in his own play. Yellow Face, directed by Leigh Silverman, is scheduled to start previews at what will be the newly renamed Todd Haimes Theatre (formerly the American Airlines Theatre but renamed after the death of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s artistic director) in September 2024.

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Kim is known for his work on projects such as Lost, Hawaii Five-O, Stowaway and Raya and The Last Dragon. He made his Broadway debut in 2017 as King Siam in The King and I and recently performed in My Favorite Things: The Rodgers and Hammerstein Anniversary Concert in London’s West End. Kim starred in and produced an Audible adaptation of Yellow Face as part of a multi-project development deal with the company.

The Roundabout Theatre Company season will also include a musical revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, starring Ramin Karimloo and David Hyde Pierce. The production, directed by Scott Ellis (the current interim artistic director at Roundabout) and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, sets the classic show in New Orleans with a jazz and blues take on the score.

The Broadway premiere of Sanaa Toosi’s play English, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023, will play the Todd Haimes Theatre in December 2024. Knud Adams directs the play about a classroom of Iranian adults trying to learn English for their proficiency exam.

“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. 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. I am thrilled the season will close with our jazz-infused, New Orleans-style production of The Pirates of Penzance — which began as a small in-house reading before the pandemic, then further developed in benefit concert last season, and which Todd was passionately committed to producing,” Ellis said.

Roundabout will also produce Off-Broadway productions of The Counter, written by Meghan Kennedy and directed by David Cromer, in September 2024 and Liberation, written by Bess Wohl and directed by Whitney White, in January 2025.

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