Its creators are less concerned with redramatizing the case than with exploring the minds of the two men. It is also a very different creature from M. Where Hwang told it from the perspective of the duped diplomat with his romantic Western fantasies about the East, this piece – co-created by Canadian composer Njo Kong Kie and Macau playwright Wong Teng Chi – sees it primarily from the Asian Shi's more knowing point of view.

Shi and His Lover, the new chamber musical at Tarragon Theatre, takes the same real-life tale but attacks it from a different angle. Butterfly, American playwright David Henry Hwang's celebrated 1988 drama based on the story, which is currently getting a major Broadway revival starring Clive Owen and directed by Julie Taymor.īut let's turn the spotlight away from Hwang's play and train it on a less starry, more intimate show. The bizarre case of French diplomat Bernard Boursicot, who conducted a 20-year affair with the Beijing opera singer-cum-spy Shi Pei Pu – all the time believing him to be a woman – is back in the spotlight again.

Butterfly wong chinese opera singer