A Trip to Chinatown

A Trip to Chinatown is a musical comedy in three acts by Charles H. Hoyt with music by Percy Gaunt and lyrics by Hoyt. In addition to the Gaunt and Hoyt score, many songs were interpolated into the score at one time or another during the run, as was fashionable for musicals of the era. The story concerns a widow who accidentally maneuvers several young suburban couples into a big city restaurant and brings romance to them and herself, as in Hello, Dolly!

After almost a year of touring, the musical opened at Broadway’s Madison Square Theater on November 9, 1891 and ran for 657 performances, or just short of two years. This was the longest-running Broadway musical in history up to that time (although London had seen a few longer runs), and it held that record until Irene in 1919. The show was such a hit that several road companies played it throughout the country simultaneously with the Broadway production, and at one point a second company was even opened in New York while the original company was still performing on Broadway. The cast included Trixie Friganza and Harry Conor, who introduced "The Bowery".

A version of the show was produced in 1912 under the title A Winsome Widow, and a film adaptation featuring Anna May Wong was made in 1926.

Hoyt was born in Concord, New Hampshire (USA) in 1859. In the 1870s, Hoyt became musical and dramatic critic of the Boston Post. Beginning in 1883, he began a career as a playwright, producing a series of twenty farcical comedies (roughly one per year until his death) and a comic opera. Hoyt had his own theater, the Madison Square Theater, where A Trip to Chinatown was performed.