Theatre in Review: Golden Child (Signature Theatre)

	Photo: Richard Termine

There is a moment at the end of the first act of Golden Child that crystallizes the enormous ambivalence that informs David Henry Hwang's vision of a traditional household profoundly challenged by modernity. It is 1918, in Fujian, China. Ahn, a ten-year-old girl brought up in a traditional household, is about to get her feet unbound, at the orders of her father, Tieng-Bin. He has ordered that his household will embrace Western ways, including Christianity, and, for a start, his beloved daughter will no longer be subject to the ritual that crippled generations of Chinese women. The girl's mother is appalled -- she correctly predicts that, thanks to the process of unbinding, "her agony will be multiplied twofold." As the girl cries out in pain, her mother offers a warning: "Daughter -- you do not know what a terrible gift is freedom!"

All of Hwang's plays are, to a greater or lesser degree, about the clash between Eastern and Western worldviews, but the results are especially dire for the characters of Golden Child. Tieng-Bin is a wealthy landowner and businessman who, after a three-year sojourn in Manila, returns to a home populated by three wives and riven with internecine warfare. Siu-Yong, the first wife, rules the household with a will of iron, retiring to the comfort of an opium pipe at night. Luan, the second wife, jockeys for a position of power, working behind a falsely benign façade to undermine her rivals. Eling, the third wife -- and the woman Tien-Bin really loves -- is the passive, unhappy victim of the other ladies' stratagems.

Hwang's depiction of the household's complex, utterly rigid rules is absolutely crucial to the play's success -- and most of the details he supplies are fascinating. The wives communicate in their own special diplomatic language, concealing their catty observations in flowery politeness. When Tieng-Bin arrives home, they interpret his gifts as indications of their status. Siu-Yong is deflated to receive a cuckoo clock, and Luan is devastated to receive a waffle iron. Eling receives a Victrola, upon which Tien-Bin places a record of highlights from La Traviata. Listening to the music, the crafty Luan, hedging her bets, says, "It's so primitive, so crude and barbaric. I love it!"

It's also true that Hwang dwells on the wives' transparent hypocrisy so long that Golden Child starts to feel like a particularly wan revival of The Women. "If you can't live with dishonesty, you have no business calling yourself a woman," says Siu-Yong, who gets most of these would-be zingers. "Call him your master, and he is your slave for life," she advises Luan, adding, "Thank heaven for duty. Without it we would be forced to think for ourselves." There's plenty more where that came from: "No one ever said feminine beauty is pretty." "Her modesty was absolutely shameless." "I am constantly amazed at your rigid flexibility." This is sitcom stuff, not really worthy of Hwang; I've seen Golden Child three times since its 1996 premiere and I've yet to hear any of these lines get a big laugh.

There's another trap built into the play's premise: Because they are so defined by the roles assigned to them, none of the wives ever evolves into a fully dimensional character. Siu-Yong makes acid wisecracks; Luan makes a big show of abasing herself; and Eling frets, passively, about her fate. After a while, their subdued three-way domestic war becomes wearying. The play's most puzzling aspect is the dialogue's contemporary quality. When one of the wives describes Westerners as big, hairy demons, Tieng-Bin remonstrates with her, saying, "That's a stereotype!" Later, he tells them, "Don't feel any pressure." And when he protests to Eling that he has been celibate for three years, she blurts out, "The prostitutes in Manila must be for shit!" These moments have a way of neutralizing the play's central point; it's hard to believe that these people are struggling with strange Western ideas if they sound like characters on network television.

Still, the arrival of the Reverend Baines, a missionary looking to increase his haul of souls, focuses the drama to its benefit. Soon, Tieng-Bin finds himself falling under Christianity's sway -- interestingly, not out of the love of God but because he is intoxicated with the distinctly un-Eastern concept of the individual, which, he believes, can free him from his family's crushing traditions. Of course, once he converts, he is allowed only one wife, and, following this decision, disaster rains down on the household.

Hwang harbors no sentimental feelings for the old ways, which are often depicted in Golden Child as cruel and stifling. But the fallout from Tieng-Bin's conversion could hardly be worse; the old ways are swiftly killed off and more than one character cannot live with the consequences. Interestingly, in a new framing device that Hwang added for this production, the story is told by the elderly Ahn to her grandson. In these scenes, Ahn, a devout Christian, is disturbed that the young man has no interest in the Christian church. Thus, Ahn's once-revolutionary religion is next in line to be overthrown by a new generation.

The prologue and epilogue are rather awkward, partly because Annie Q, who is charming as the child Ahn, struggles to play her at an advanced age, offering line readings that are all but unintelligible. Even more oddly, the program places the prologue and epilogue in 1958, fifty years after the main portion of the play, when Ahn is ten. Therefore, she should be only 60 in these scenes, not a superannuated specimen with one foot in the grave. Earlier versions of Golden Child used at least two other framing devices; it's interesting that, after all this time, Hwang still seems to be looking for the right approach.

Aside from Greg Watanabe, who, despite his natural authority as Tieng-Bin, seemed under vocal strain at the performance I attended, the rest of the cast works well within the constraints of their characters. Julyana Soelistyo, who created the role of Ahn in 1996, has a presence that belies her small stature as Siu-Yong; she is also very touching when, forced to stare defeat in the face, she makes a drastic decision to preserve her dignity. Jennifer Lim makes a most attractive schemer as Luan, even when the character plays her hand too blatantly. Lesley Hu is appealing as the relatively vulnerable Eling, especially in a scene in which she applies a conventionally Western approach to seducing her husband. Forced to speak a kind of pidgin English that is meant to represent his poor grasp of Chinese, Matthew Maher makes the Reverend Baines into a likeable fellow, sunnily unaware of the shock waves he is unleashing on Tieng-Bin's wives and offspring.

Leigh Silverman's well-paced production is supported by a first-rate design team. Neil Patel surrounds the action with a trio of Chinese pavilions, which are beautifully treated with sidelight by Matt Frey. Patel's set, with its intricately carved walls, acts as a gobo for Frey's abundant use of sidelight, creating beautiful, complex patterns. Anita Yavich's costume design combines richly colored, flowing Chinese robes with precisely tailored Western clothes, especially the stunning outfit adopted by Luan to show that she is a woman of the 20th century. Darron L West's sound design provides a variety of effects, musical and otherwise.

The story of Golden Child is a rich one -- you could get a novel out of it -- and, despite everything, you'll probably be eager to know what happens to each member of this embattled household. But, overall, Hwang's is surprisingly reductive and, at times, strangely tentative. After 16 years of tinkering, this project remains only partially realized.--David Barbour