When M. Butterfly premiered on Broadway on March 20, 1988, it created a sensation and put playwright David Henry Hwang on the map. Never before had a play so fearlessly covered the topics of race, gender, colonialism, and experimental theatricality, especially not on a Broadway stage. The risks that the production took paid off, and the play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and won the Tony for Best Play.
The play did not receive a revival until 2017, when director Julie Taymor—best known for her work as the director of the smash Broadway adaptation of Disney's The Lion King—signed on to direct. For this production, Hwang saw that the political climate had changed considerably since the first production, and he wanted to make changes to the script to address these changes.
Hwang took a matter-of-fact approach to revising his work, saying in an interview with Jen Gushue, "I was waiting for a way to engage the material again in a way that made it feel fresh. I hoped it would engage with the culture in a similar way that it did thirty years ago. I knew that would involve having a bold new approach to the production, and I came to realize that I also wanted to look at the text again." Part of his desire to revise came from a desire to utilize the internet to clarify the historical context of the story, and another part was an effort to write in more contemporary terms on the topic of gender and sexuality. In that same interview, Hwang says, "We’re so much more aware of nonconforming gender identities and different forms of gender expression now. I wasn’t sure if Song Liling was even a transgender character, but I wanted to consult with people who are closer to this experience than me." As a result, the revival version of the play balanced out the relationship between Song and Gallimard, in order to reveal more about Song's experience and address their gender with greater sensitivity.
The revival of M. Butterfly was met with mixed reviews, with New York Times critic Ben Brantley scathingly writing, "Maybe they should call it M. Moth." Sarah Holdren wrote for New York Magazine, "Despite compelling performances by both leads—especially Ha, whose Song is a consummate actor, layers of carefully cultivated performance around an iron core whose only real law is survival—both play and production wander into clunkiness and confusion." Unfortunately, for all its good intentions, the revival could not meet the standards set by the long-running original production.
