Jin Ha & the cast (Photo: Matthew Murphy)

A good deal of what was fascinating in 1988, still is.

The script additions and deletions and Taymor's staging innovations work quite well. Paul Steinberg's scenic design with its sliding panels, at first looks rather bare bones, but morphs into colorfully painted panels to accommodate the kabuki style scenes in which choreography by Ma Cong and music by Taymor's husband Elliot Goldenthal shift the emphasis from Puccini's Madama Butterfly to the Peking opera and also illustrate the aura of the cultural revolution . These scenes are quite stunning but do tend to overwhelm the essential story.

The most obvious and least successful rewrite comes during the trial scene when Song Liling goes into extensive details about the mechanics of his and Gailimard's sexual encounters. Instead of feeling fresh and daring, the otherwise riveting segment feels over-stuffed.

Even if not a word in the text were changed, it's unlikely that anything except the last scene (a breath taker) can shock audiences accustomed to greatly changed social mores and non-traditional gender identities. On the other hand, the socio-political aspects of the play though specific to the time when America was about to take over France's failure in Vietnam, are depressingly undated.

Mr. Hwang's aim was always to use the male-female-male gender aspects of this improbable but fact-based romantic mystery as a metaphor to reveal the universal conflict between men and women, East and West. The way Gallimard blinds himself to the true identity of the Chinese version Puccini's opera thus makes him a potent symbol of the tone-deaf Westerner's sense of superiority and his belief that "Orientals will always submit to a greater force."

Of course those "Orientals" didn't submit within a year to the powerful Americans as predicted by the sexually insecure but overly confident about his cultural superiority Gallimard. And so, who seeing this revival can miss the similarities to the tone deaf diplomacy of America's current government or how the brouhaha triggered by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's downfall has made that "Western rape mentality" mentioned in Song's testimony all too universal.

Clive Owen and Jin Ha both give vivid new life to the diplomat and the object of his fantasy — the "perfect woman" created by a man "because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act."

The British Owen has hardly made his reputation as the not very attractive persona originally associated with Gallimard. His on screen roles include the debonair title character of Croupier. In his only other Broadway appearance he played the cocky, suave Deeley of Harold Pinter's Old Times . Yet, he manages to give a terrifically watchable, full-bodied performance that captures the man's deep despair, conflicting emotions and wry humor. And just listening to his crystal clear line delivery is a pleasure in and of itself.

Those who saw B.D. Wong's Song Liling's, may find Jin Ha not quite as delicately feminine. However, his interpretation makes for an impressive Broadway debut. There is a downside for both actors. Both are best when alone on stage (which Owen happily is almost throughout) or with other characters, since the sexual sizzle between them never rises above a simmer.