David Henry Hwang's latest play, produced in an Asian-American theater named after him, measures the price that change exacts on family. Set largely in a village near Samoy, in southeast China, in 1918, Golden Child is an autobiographical work dealing with Eng Tien-Bin, a man patterned after Hwang's grandfather.
Played skillfully by Daniel Dae Kim, this is a patriarch being pulled in two directions. Raised a Confucian, he has learned Western ways from his three years as a successful businessman in Manila. This causes problems when he returns home and must reintegrate himself with his three wives, all of whom have had their feet bound, in conformity with tradition. Tien-Bin's exposure to Christian ideology and notions of progress prompts him to order the unbinding of his Golden Child: the teenage daughter (Melody Butiu), borne by wife Number 1.
Supporting him in this radical, even revolutionary move is Rev. Anthony Baines (Robert Glaudini), a fluttery missionary blindly preaching Christian values without ever measuring their impact on reality. Next comes the decision to become monogamous; the resulting upheaval leaves the family in shambles: Wife Number 1 (the hefty, salty Amy Hill), commits suicide; Wife Number 2 (the cunning Emily Kuroda), is left out in the cold, Wife Number 3 ascends to a power she never wished to have. Hwang bookends the story by writing scenes that take place in the present, when the Golden Child is an assimilated westerner, but the strength of the story lies in the past. Hwang mixes the historical with the personal effortlessly and gives his female characters all the best and wittiest lines. No victims they, he wants us to believe -- but of course they are just that, victims of the male-dominated ideology known as Christianity.
Hwang doesn't fully attack this issue, settling instead for jabs and feints, but he does write entertainingly, and he has been blessed with a solid production that features Victoria Pentrovich's fine set, Joyce Kim Lee's distinctive costumes, and the haunting sound of a Chinese stringed instrument played by Phuong Tieu.
