Opera accused of ‘yellowface’ casting

♦ A Welsh opera company has defended its decision to stage a production set in a Chinese restaurant with an entirely Caucasian cast.

The Golden Dragon features characters listed as “Chinese mother”, “Chinese aunt, “old Asian” and “an Asian”. Yet the cast – five actors who play multiple roles – is white.

Kumiko Mendl, artistic director of the Yellow Earth Theatre company, which champions British East Asian performers, said it marked “another frankly disappointing and incomprehensible case of yellowface”.

Music Theatre Wales said: “Two air hostesses are played by burly men; a cricket by a tenor, an ant by a mezzo and a small boy by a grown woman. Quite deliberately, there is no realism.”