Marcus Choi and Evil is a Yellow Face

Jon Jon Briones and Marcus Choi

If there’s one thing Broadway performers like doing more than singing in a Broadway musical, it’s singing the night away with other Broadway performers on a Monday night. Stroll over to Joe’s Pub any Monday night and there’s probably some sort of benefit going on with Broadway performers. In fact, my friend Sharone Tannenbaum just produced Artists for World Peace on Broadway at Joe’s Pub.

Now here’s where my friend Marcus Choi comes into play. Marcus is currently in Allegiance, a fantastic new musical starring Lea Salonga and George Takei. You should see it. It’s at the Longacre on 48th street.

Anyway, Marcus needs to start performing my song “Evil is a Yellow Face” at the countless Monday night shows.

Two years ago Marcus and the wonderful Jon Jon Briones performed “Evil is a Yellow Face” at the Japanese American National Museum as part of the Marvels & Monsters: Unmasking Asian Images in U.S. Comics, 1942-1986 exhibition. They killed it. And the audience loved them.

So now that Marcus is back on Broadway I think he should dust off the Ming the Merciless costume and start singing about world domination again.

The song is from my musical China the Whole Enchilada, written with my dear friend Paul Mirkovich. In the song, Ming the Merciless and Fu Manchu lament about how they were once the number one bad guys in the world but have been replaced over the years by the Nazis, then the Commies, and then al Qaeda. So they plan on making a comeback.

We’re no ordinary malcontents/We’re arch villains from the Orient /We’re Ming and Fu Manchu/
The dreaded slant eyed two/Out to destroy the human race/Evil is a Yellow Face

In the end they’re thwarted by Charlie Chan and Hong Kong Phooey.

FYI: all of those characters were at one time played by white actors, except Phooey, who was voiced by Scatman Crothers. What up with that? (I cover that info in the song as well).

Evil is a Yellow Face. You know you want to do it Marcus.