Tracing a Family’s Past, Future Through Eyes of ‘Golden Child’

In “Golden Child,” David Henry Hwang follows his family line back to China in 1918, where he imagines a household in tumult, the lives that had to be lived so that the present could be created. The play does not always succeed dramatically as a two-way mirror, as a means of looking back in order to look forward. But it has a touching faith in the value of a historical imagination, particularly where one’s own family is concerned. “In the minds of our descendants,” notes one character in a typically well-stated passage, “we will all be born again.”

Commissioned by South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, “Golden Child” opened on Tuesday night for a short run at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York. This smart, handsome production directed by James Lapine will open at South Coast Rep on Jan. 10.

“Golden Child,” unfortunately, is not a great play, but it is a worthy attempt at one. Where it fails, it simply doesn’t reach far enough into the characters it so passionately wants to understand. Too often, Hwang avoids head-on drama to favor fatty, poetic interludes that clog the play’s arteries.

The story is strong, taken from Hwang’s own family stockpile. On the way to Kennedy Airport, Andrew Kwong (Stan Egi) is visited in a New York cab by his dead grandmother, Ahn. The remarkable Julyana Soelistyo makes Ahn the magical wand back into time, as she transforms, astonishingly and without makeup, from a tiny old woman into a lithe girl of about 10. She speaks to Andrew, a father-to-be, of the importance of passing on family stories, and she takes us back to the time when she was known, or liked to call herself, the golden child, in the center of a complicated household.

Ahn’s father is Tieng-Bin (also Egi), a prosperous businessman who has returned from two years in the Philippines. Into a strict Chinese household, where his three wives faithfully pray to their ancestors each day, he brings with him a rather fatuous missionary named Reverend Baines (John Christopher Jones) and a passionate faith in Christianity.

Hwang effectively plunges us into the wives’ power struggle, which grows ever more complicated with the introduction of Jesus into their household. First wife Siu-Yong (a harrowing portrayal by Tsai Chin) married Tieng-Bin when he was 12. Now, sexually neglected and addicted to opium, she is least able to cope with change but most determined to retain some kind of favor for her daughter Ahn. Second wife Luan (a glamorous Jodi Long) is the most devious, consolidating her power by making an ally out of the Christian missionary.

As in his most famous play, “M. Butterfly,” Hwang takes pleasure in turning certain cultural stereotypes on their heads. A man with three wives who jockey for his favor is shown not to have an exotic and erotic luxury, but a sad, sad burden. One of the main reasons that Tieng-Bin wants to emulate Western behavior is his intense attraction to his young third wife, Eling (Liana Pai). The two of them dream of fidelity, of having only each other, in some perfect, mythical union just out of their reach. And, just as he exposes the lie of the harem fantasy, Hwang also shows a hellish version of a Western-style marriage--what it can mean when you have only one partner your whole life, and she’s the wrong partner.

While the women fleetingly come to life in the play, the crucial portrait of Tieng-Bin remains stiff and unknowable. Though Egi conveys his kindness and decency, his convictions always sound as if they’re being read out of a manual: “China is changing. Men are going to want educated women,” he states, as he saves Ahn’s feet from binding. “I believe it is important to be open to new ideas.” “Everything is possible when we become individuals.”

Egi does not seem so much driven as programmed.

Also, certain key plot points are trumped up, particularly the all-important bargain struck between the treacherous second wife and the minister, which is not convincing enough as it is written.

Still, this is a good-looking production, designed by the original “Sunday in the Park With George” team--set designer Tony Straiges and the wonderful lighting designer Richard Nelson, who died of a brain tumor on Nov. 6. (David J. Lander is also credited with lighting.) The stage is occupied by the three elegant, wheat-colored pagodas of the three wives so that we can see overlapping action in a clean and efficient way.

Lapine steers the ship with a clear, firm intelligence. In the end, a projected montage of faces is meant to convey the overwhelming nature of all the stories waiting to be told to all the children waiting to be born. But the effect is only a reminder that “Golden Child” has not overwhelmed. Perhaps, in the time it takes to reach Costa Mesa, gold will be spun.

* “Golden Child,” Joseph Papp Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., New York, through Dec. 1. (212) 260-2400. Also Jan. 3-Feb. 9 at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. (714) 957-4033.