Winner of the Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award as
Best Broadway Play. A brilliant theatrical tour de force which, in its Broadway production,
became an immediate critical and popular success. Drawn from real life events, involving the
strange tale of a French diplomat who carried on a twenty year relationship with a Chinese
opera star without (he contended) being aware that his "perfect woman" was really a man,
the play becomes a powerful metaphor for the exploration of deeper themes; the perception
of Eastern culture by the West, and the persistent romanticism which clouds and inhibits that
perception