FANTASTIC. A cutting and innovative interrogation of "Orientalist" stereotypes, using a real-life story and the opera *Madame Butterfly.* I am pretty sure this is the play I will be teaching this fall. ( )

Reviewed on my blog (see my profile)

A play reimagining Madame Butterfly. The author based it on a brief news article about a man who had a long term affair with someone he thought was a woman, but was in fact a man. So this telling of Butterfly has lots of specific references (music, etc) but has a gender twist that is unexpected.

Still not a fan of reading plays (read this one for the #ReadHarder challenge)....the stage/lighting directions seemed to give me a hard stop and interrupted the flow of the dialog in such a way that they story was choppy. From what I understand the actual performance of the play is quite amazing. ( )

Better than I expected, but the summary in the beginning ruined the plot for me. ( )

Most people I talk to when discussing a book/play that has been made into a film, will invariably say to me ' the book was better'. I don't know if people have said this about M Butterfly, but if they said it, I don't agree. Had I read this before I saw the film with Jeremy Irons, I most likely would not have even finished it. I would have preferred it as a novel or a biography, not a play.

The film is wonderful, and the customs fantastic and colorful. The play is a dull gray in comparison. ( )

This play was better than I thought it was going to be. The plot got really interesting in the second Act. I do admit at times it was hard to tell what aspects were from the Operas they were discussing and the actual play I was reading. This play brought up some touchy topics and I thought it was wonderful. ( )