Soft Power is a musical (also referred to by its authors as a "play with a musical"^[1]) with book and lyrics by David Henry Hwang^[2] and music and additional lyrics by Jeanine Tesori.

Soft Power was intended as a "reverse The King And I". Instead of exoticizing an Asian country, Soft Power exoticizes America by looking at it from a hypothetical future Chinese musical. It also serves as a quasi-sequel to Hwang's 2007 play Yellow Face. Like that play, the semi-autobiographical work centers around a stand-in for the author named DHH interacting with fictional characters. ^[3] The play was partially inspired by an incident in 2015, where Hwang was stabbed by a stranger on the streets of New York.

Performances

It began performances at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in May 2018^[4] and at San Francisco's Curran Theatre in June.^[5] The musical began performances off-Broadway at The Public Theater on September 14, 2019, directed by Leigh Silverman, and closed on November 17, 2019.^[6] The show was nominated for 11 awards at the 2020 Drama Desk Awards, the most of any show that year, but didn't win any.^[7][8]

Summary

In 2015, playwright DHH (a stand-in for the author), meets with Chinese film executive Xue Xing about adapting a Chinese film into an American-style romantic comedy musical aimed at Chinese audiences. They attend a performance of The King and I that is a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign alongside Xing's American girlfriend Zoe, where Xing briefly meets Clinton.

DHH's efforts to adapt the film, the title of which roughly translates to "Stick With Your Mistake", are complicated by what he sees as different values between American and Chinese culture: he takes umbrage with the ending where the hero returns to an unhappy marriage instead of following his heart, and feels that with the upcoming 2016 election and belief that Hilary Clinton will become president, he needs to write a musical where dreams are fulfilled and freedom flourishes. His view on the matter changes when Clinton loses the election to "the other candidate", and Xue Xing suggests suspending the project in the aftermath.

Shortly after, DHH is stabbed in the neck in an apparent hate crime. On the surgery table, he has a hallucinatory vision of a Musical retelling of Xue Xing's trip to America, where he meets and falls in love with Hilary Clinton, as written by a Chinese author 50 years in the future. The musical imagines a future where America has lost its soft power, and many of the details about America are "as hilariously inexact as most Western stories set in Asia".^[9] For example, Xing travels to the "Hollywood Airport" and Hillary performs a number while revealing a Wonder Woman outfit in a glitzy McDonald's. Most of the "white" roles are played by Asian actors in whiteface and incorrect accents,^[1] a reversal of the movie version of The King and I. The musical also examines the nature of democracy, cultural identity, appropriation and racism.^[10]

Cast and characters

Musical numbers

Critical response

Sam Hurwitt of The Mercury News called it "marvelously clever", also saying that Alyse Alan Louis as Hillary Clinton "tears the roof off the place",^[5] and Frank Rizzo of Variety said it was "subversive as well as funny, touching and thoroughly entertaining".^[12] In more mixed reviews, Jackson McHenry of Vulture said that it tended to be fascinating and messy, with the musical within the play being "occasionally too clever by half",^[13] and Jesse Green of The New York Times said that it was "something of a miracle but also something of a muddle", and "it's the kind of show that deserves, and unfortunately needs, to be seen at least twice."^[1]

Awards and nominations

Soft Power won six of Los Angeles' 2019 Ovation Awards, including Best Production of a Musical (Large Theater).^[4]

The Public Theater production of Soft Power was nominated for five Lucille Lortel Awards, including Outstanding Musical.

The musical was named 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist, with the committee cited the show as "A multi-layered and mischievous musical that deconstructs a beloved, original American art form to examine the promise and the limits of representation in both the theatrical and political senses of the word."^[14]

Original Off-Broadway production

Recording

The original cast recording was released on April 17, 2020 through Ghostlight Records.^[19] The album peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Cast Albums chart.^[20]