The Joy Luck Club
Susan Kim’s faithful adaptation of Amy Tan’s best-selling novel and screenplay performed by the East West Players for an extended run is a stirring masterpiece that interweaves Tan’s parabolic narratives into mythical vignettes between four Chinese mothers and their American daughters.
With more than eight storylines flashbacking from San Francisco to China, the cultural and generational gap is keenly felt and emotionally gripping, even at the risk of losing some cohesion and flow further exacerbated by the cast playing two or more roles.
Using the film version as a blueprint to guide the direction of the show, Kim fleshes out Tan’s rich, lyrical prose, especially in the flashback scenes of Act II that incorporate folklore and mysticism in “The Moon Lady,” “Best Quality,” and “Waiting Between the Trees.” Fine tuning and polishing the gems in Tan’s sweeping, epic novel, Kim finds tender moments that encapsulate the universal tension between mothers and daughters and juxtapositions it against those that provide a sharp contrast between American idealism and Chinese filial piety. At its core, the play is a deeply frank and humorous celebration of the tenuous connection reinforced by expectation, disappointment, hope and the enduring love and sacrifice that surpasses all of these.
Director Jon Lawrence Rivera superbly achieves the Herculean task of maintaining some semblance of order and balance in the tangle of intersecting lives with the ingenuous aid of a large scroll onstage, cleverly designed by John H. Binkley, that lights with the names and chapters taken from each character’s life. The immediate staging and action however of the first few scenes upstage the scroll’s intended purpose, and it isn’t until much later in the play when the text stands out. But the scroll serves a symbolic function, as a bridge between oral tradition and the written word that the narrator – an underachieving copywriter Jing-Mei Woo “June” (Elaine Kao) records her inspiring journey of self-discovery and the lives of her deceased mother’s friends that gather weekly for a game of mahjong and calling themselves “The Joy Luck Club.”
The emotional tug of war in the novel and the film does not always play out theatrically onstage, at times feeling more like a heady discourse in the monologues and narration. But the exasperation and frustration between the women lends itself to hilarious observations from both sides of the fence.
“If you tell a Chinese mother to shut up you can be an accessory to your own murder.”
With less time to delve into the details of every character, (the play runs approximately two hours), the anecdotal asides provide insight and relief from the more heart-rending dramatics that are more effective in concept than execution. The simpler moments are more lasting and impressionable. Lindo Jong’s (Karen Huie) quiet packing away of chess pieces after her prodigious chess champion daughter Waverly (Celeste Den) admits embarrassment over her mother’s bragging rights has much more impact than An-Mei Hsu’s (Emily Kuroda) outpouring of grief over her son’s drowning. Coupled with bittersweet turns of phrase like Ying-Ying St. Clair (Deborah Png) telling her daughter Lena (Katherine Lee) “You have no spirit,” there is a wide spectrum of psychological complexity and metaphoric imagery that holds this play together as a whole even if the individual scenes do not always transition seamlessly.
Beautifully playing multiple roles, Celeste Den, Katherine Lee, and Elaine Kao find an exquisite combination of longing and freedom from their mother’s expectations. Karen Huie and Deborah Png are delightful and moving. The rest of the cast is first-rate, giving a feeling of community in the first few scenes, particularly the mahjong game, that unfortunately does not sustain itself throughout. The male leads give solid performances, but are eclipsed by the female tour de force. This is an understandable and excusable oversight, but when the husbands and wives faceoff in their spousal showdowns, the men come across as artificial devices, and do not provide nearly enough resistance to be believable obstacles for the women.
Rivera enhances the mood and provides yet another layer of texture by incorporating live music, scored by film composer Nathan Wang, upstage of the action and occasionally becoming part of the scene in “The Moon Lady” sequence.
The whole heart of this play more than makes up for the few rough splices along the way. The tone and authority of Amy Tan’s exceptional work shines through even if it is not always traditionally theatric in the “Poetics” sense. It is a joy to see and a club to which any mother and daughter from any culture and age will feel that they belong.
“The Joy Luck Club”
David Henry Hwang Theater
Union Center for the Arts
120 Judge John Aiso Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Runs through December 7th
Wed, Thurs, Fri, and Sat at 8pm
Sundays at 2pm
Ph: 213-625-7000