Despite a Tony nomination as Best Play of 1998, David Henry Hwang's Golden Child, will close May 31 after its 69th performance.
Producer Benjamin Mordecai told Playbill On-Line "As things stand, we do not have the resources to go on."
The closing notice is remarkable in that Golden Child was nominated for three Tony Awards May 4, and most Broadway productions wait until the Tony ceremony in the hope that an award will boost business. Featured actress Julyana Soelistyo and costumer Martin Pakledinaz are also nominated for prizes. The Tonys will be held at Radio City Music Hall on June 7.
Golden Child has been performing disappointingly at the box office. For the week ending May 17, the show brought in only $84,670 in grosses, filling less than 42 percent of the seats. Recently, the play has been advertised as being in its "Last Weeks."
Hwang's Golden Child opened Apr. 2 to good reviews at Broadway's Longacre Theatre after a two-year development process that took it from Greenwich Village to California, to Singapore, to San Francisco and back. Author of the Tony-winning M. Butterfly, Hwang has been revising the play, about a young Chinese-American who is inspired to remember the funny, dramatic and poignant tales his grandmother told him about growing up with her father. She was labeled a "golden child" who was touched by fortune, until she got caught in the middle of a chaotic collision between Eastern and Western ways, when he brought a British Christian missionary home to her and his wives.
Starring in the Broadway mounting is Tsai Chin, who won a Village Voice Obie for playing Eng Siu-Yong in Golden Child Off-Broadway. Randall Duk Kim, recently in the King And I revival, plays Eng Tieng Bin. Also in the cast are Ming-Na Wen, John Horton, Kim Miyori (TV's "St. Elsewhere") and the Tony-nominated Soelistyo.
As they did in the Costa Mesa, CA, production, Tony Straiges designed the sets, Martin Pakledinaz the costumes, David J. Lander the lighting. Sound design is by Dan Moses Schreier.
Hwang's drama of East-West culture clashes had its premiere at the New York Shakespeare Festival in fall 1996. The current production had its West Coast premiere Jan. 3 at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, CA. The show began rehearsals in early December and then had a try-out in Singapore (Jan. 13-25), and was followed by a pre-Broadway run at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre (Feb. 18-March 15). James Lapine is directing.
Tickets are on sale via TeleCharge, (212) 239-6200, and at the box office.
