Yellow Face, which wraps a successful revival run at Roundabout’s Haimes Theater today, is a semi-autobiographical play written by David Henry Hwang. How semi-autobiographical? The main character, DHH, is a playwright trying to stage a production of David Henry Hwang’s own 1993 play Face Value, a notorious flop from the author of M. Butterfly, which had made Hwang the first Asian American playwright to win a Tony Award for Best Play in 1988.

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But Yellow Face also concerns the U.S. government’s fear of Chinese interference in American elections, and the suspicion that fell on Chinese churches, Chinese scientists and Chinese businessmen, including David’s own father, Henry Yuan Hwang. If all this sounds au courant, consider that Yellow Face was first produced nearly 20 years ago, in 2007, first in Los Angeles and then in New York at the Public Theater.

“It’s amazing,” Francis Jue tells Observer. Jue plays HHH, the character based on Henry Yuan Hwang, having first played the role at the Public. “David wrote Yellow Face 20 years ago when it was happening, but it feels like it’s a play of today. We’re still talking about the same questions. What do we believe America is? Who should be able to decide who we are? Why can’t we decide for ourselves? I feel grateful to be doing this show right now because it feels like I am not just sitting........

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