Charlie Brown and the Great White Way

Article by Michael Riedel
(Published in New York Post, February 4 1999)

Nine years ago B.D. Wong led the fight against the casting of Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian pimp in Miss Saigon. He, along with Actors Equity, argued that it was "racially false" to allow an Asian role to be played by a Caucasion. But now the shoe is on the other foot. In the revival of Charlie Brown, opening tonight at the Ambassador Theater, Wong plays Linus, who, in the famed Charles Schulz comic strip, is, of course, a little white boy.

Yet nobody's kicking up a fuss about it. If it's racially false to put a white actor in an Asian role, isn't racially false to do the reverse?

"You mean sort of reverse discrimination," says Wong. "I don't think so. With 'Miss Saigon' we wanted to make the point that Asians were under-represented on Broadway. But I don't think I'm taking a job away from a white actor.

"Besides, I think I'm more like Linus than most white people. I really fit the part."

The battle over non-traditional casting is pretty much over, with game set and match going to the multi-culturalists. These days, revivals of classic musicals often feature minority actors playing roles originally written for whites. Carousel had a black Mrs. Snow, On the Town a Japanese MP (guarding the Brooklyn Naval Yard no less!), Annie Get Your Gun a black sheriff and Charlie Brown a black Schroeder.

And there are more Asians working on Broadway than ever before. Indeed, every actor who has followed Jonathan Pryce into "Miss Saigon" has been Asian.

"It's clearly much better than it was," says Wong.

In some ways, it may have even gone too far. Wong, a fourth generation Asian-American from San Fransisco, declines to discuss his specific Asian heritage. The reason, he says, is that casting directors are now so sensitive to the issue that they don't want to put a Chinese actor in a Japanese role or give a Korean the part of a Vietnemese.

"It's a politically correct, new-fangled thing," he says, laughing.

Charlie Brown marks Wong's return to Broadway since he played a transvestite in the 1988 play M. Butterfly. He won a Tony for his performance but for years was stereotyped, he says, as an Asian actor who could only play "these flamboyant, eccentric, theatrical characters."

"It took about six years for people to figure out that I wasn't the character they saw in M. Butterfly."

Since then, the actor has given memorable turns both in the movies and on television.