Actor takes on Mickey Rooney and Asian stereotypes in one-man play at Urbanite

At a time when actors have to think twice about whether it’s appropriate to take on a role based on their gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and physical qualities, it may be stunning that the performance of Mickey Rooney as a Japanese artist in the 1961 romantic drama “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” didn’t set off more alarms from critics and viewers when it was released.

With thick glasses, buck teeth and slanted eyes, Rooney played Holly Golightly’s put-upon landlord in a cartoonish “yellowface” style that raised only some eyebrows at the time.

The New York Times called the performance “broadly exotic” while The Hollywood Reporter said Rooney “gives his customary all to the part of a Japanese photographer, but the role is a caricature and will be offensive to many.”

It has only grown more so over the years.

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Actor J. Elijah Cho says he has had a long and complicated relationship with the enduring Blake Edwards film that starred Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard. It triggered him to explore the casting and what Rooney’s portrayal says about society’s view of Asian Americans in his one-man play “Mr. Yunioshi.” It will be presented for a special limited engagement this week at Urbanite Theatre, followed by another week at St. Petersburg’s freeFall Theatre.

“When I think of that movie, it’s so jarring, so far removed from what a natural person looks like,” Cho said in a recent Zoom interview. “He’s playing a caricature. But at the same time, when I think about pieces of art like ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ I wonder, do we talk about it or do we just talk about the movie itself. I’m of the mindset that if we ignore that performance, it exacerbates the problem.”

In his show, Cho portrays Rooney preparing to play Mr. Yunioshi, who is a somewhat extraneous character in the overall story. At the time of the film, it wasn’t unusual for white actors to be cast as people of different races or ethnicities, with the help of makeup and costuming.

“It’s like trying to take something harmful and kind of explore it in a way,” Cho said. “I try to use comedy because as touchy a subject as this is, comedy gives us a way in, to let us have a dialogue. It’s a good way to respond to things with laughter.”

He first presented the piece at the New York Fringe Festival about six years ago.

“I applied to the festival with just the idea, that I, as an Asian-American would like to do this show about Mickey Rooney. They said yes,”  he said, describing the initial version as “very gimmicky and tongue-in-cheek and how wacky is this.”

He put it aside until 2019, when he brought it to the Hollywood Fringe Festival, where it was named best solo performance. In that production, “I really dug into what it means to use comedy to maybe getting an audience to empathize.”

The website fringereview.co.uk, which focuses on festival productions, said the play was the “must-see solo show” of that year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival. “It’s smart, fresh, clever, funny from start to finish and exactly the kind of show you hope to see during Fringe.”

The pandemic put another pause in the production, but he began working on it again and has brought the show to several theaters, including a May run at New York’s SoHo Playhouse.

His portrayal and tone has changed over time. Cho said he tries to give Rooney “the benefit of the doubt” in his performance because of his long career and his efforts to stay relevant as a performer at the time. “If he had tackled it like an actor, not a caricature, tried to create a character, does that make it OK. I have my feelings about it.”

The image of Rooney in the film is something that’s the result of World War II cartoons about Japanese people, he said.

“The glasses and buck teeth make an appearance in those old cartoons, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck,” Cho said. “Mickey Rooney is not inventing that caricature. He’s playing to a jingoistic segment of an audience. That’s something that artists do, I don’t want to say out of desperation, to kind of bait a part of the population for another part of the population’s entertainment.

Mr. Yunioshi is hardly the only character who has raised concerns. Cho, who lived in Tampa while attending the University of South Florida, recalls being confused the first time he saw the 1985 film “Remo Williams” in which white actor Joel Grey played a Korean grand martial arts master.

“As a kid, I thought he looks a little weird, but there’s a Korean person in this movie, so representation is there in a weird, complicated way for me as a kid.” He eventually wondered why they “couldn’t find anything ‘right’ for the role, they had to go with this person. That’s a little hurtful, if not outright insulting to hear it could have gone to an Asian person, but there weren’t any good enough.”

‘Mr. Yunioshi’

Written and directed by and starring J. Elijah Cho. Sept. 7-11, Urbanite Theatre, 1487 Second St., Sarasota. Tickets are $7-$41. 941-321-1397; urbanitetheatre.com

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Urbanite Theatre play tackles Asian stereotypes and Mickey Rooney