Review: ‘My Policeman’ unspools longing and regret of a Harry Styles-centered sexual triangle.
The most fascinating thing about the new musical My Policeman is that its narrative could, and hopefully will, become a classic in the way a film that ends up being one of the finest films of a particular era is. There’s a sense of inevitability about the ending, in which we’re led through each of the show’s three narrative arcs to a conclusion that’s equally satisfying to fans and to critics. And you could make the argument that without the movie’s influence, Ip Man wouldn’t be as a cultural touchstone.
At a time when the Asian-American community is under siege as never before, My Policeman is one of the few projects on Broadway with a chance of challenging our prevailing Hollywood narrative: Asian-American men are not heroes to the end, they’re victims.
In My Policeman, four Asian-American characters—the police officer who comes to know how he truly feels through his sexuality, his love for another law enforcement officer who’s gay, his daughter, and a woman named Lisa whose family he and his partner murdered on Christmas Eve 1994—determine their own personal destiny.
This is the story of a police officer who can’t let go of his last relationship, but who’s also not quite ready to accept the fact that he’s gay, and of a man who still hasn’t found or gotten over his wife, and of a father who will have to confront his former son-in-law (and the woman he killed) in order to save his daughter’s life. And it’s the story of the daughter who feels like an outsider even though the man she loves wants her to be his everything.
My Policeman follows its characters’ journey chronologically. All four are played by Asian men—Michael Pe, Michael Cheung, Ryan Kim and Aaron Wang. At times, Pe—the ex-homicide cop—is even played by Ryan