The Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang has a conflicted relationship with The King and I: enamored by its music, troubled by its exoticization and yellowface past. Soft Power, his newest musical running through Nov. 17 at New York City’s Public Theater, is his attempt to confront the musical’s contradictions and bring it into a new era. With music by fellow Tony winner Jeanine Tesori, Soft Power emulates the musical grandeur of The King and I, but also flips its racial politics on their head by depicting a Chinese man who comes to America and falls in love with a white woman—namely, Hillary Clinton.