Special to Asia
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| Mothers &daughters: Emily Kuroda, Jennifer Chang, Deborah Png, Katherine Lee, Karen Huie, Celeste Den, Elaine Kao, and Cici Lau. |
East West Players could not have better timed their moving production of THE JOY LUCK CLUB, adapted by Susan Kim from the best selling 1989 novel by Amy Tan.
The production, which opened on November 12th, comes on the heels of both religious and secular autumn celebrations - Halloween, Samhain, All Saints, All Souls, and the various Festival of the Dead observances that memorialize and acknowledge our ancestral bonds.
China, too celebrates the dead in their Ghost Festivals. This spirit, along with the culturally ingrained ancestral veneration teachings of Confucius and Laozi, are at the core of Kim's play.
The play unfolds through the eyes of four China-born mothers and their American-born daughters. The modern, free-spirited young women, (June Woo, Waverly Jong, Lena St. Clair and Rose Hsu Jordan) struggle to understand and often reject the traditional and seemingly out-dated ideas of their mothers, (Suyuan Woo, Lingo Jong, Ying-Ying St. Clair and An-Mei Hsu). As the mothers work through dark memories and share their own life struggles, the cultural and generational gaps begin to close.
The many introspective monologues of Act I make for a slow paced first act. Tan's broad-sweeping novel has been greatly condensed by Kim, but it is still a lot to take in even if one has read the book or seen the film. The audience is being introduced to eight-plus characters, and learning to identify each one. The strongest moments of Act I are the lighthearted ensemble scenes such as those around the Mahjong table. Here we are more grounded in the present, and the exposition is easier to absorb and more energized.
Composer Nathan Wang brilliantly opens with the floating sounds of isolated instruments that gradually blend together, beginning with a solo cello, joined by a flute and then a piano. These beautiful and lilting melodies reinforce the dreamy nature of revisiting old memories.
By the second act, with the major exposition out of the way, we can follow the stories and characters with more ease, and Wang's thematic music feels more grounded to each scene. Director Jon Lawrence Rivera's set and costume team likewise guide us along. Dori Quan's costumes help us put two and two together by pairing each mother-daughter set in matching color palettes. The magnificent set, by John H. Binkley, has an urban brick apartment wall with fire escape and balcony as a backdrop, offset by an ancient giant scroll that sprawls across the stage. Beginning high up on one side of the stage, the scroll comes down flat across the stage floor, and ends in a curl on the opposite side. A character name and title for each story is projected on the scroll, which further helps to keep track of the many flashbacks of the play. Flashbacks are always tricky, and Rivera handles them well, however it is not always clear how old the characters are or the time period of their memories.
The women of the cast offer strong, ensemble performances. Jennifer Chang's disturbingly weak-willed Rose is empowered by her long-suffering mother An-Mei Hsu (Emily Kuroda). Celeste Den is commanding as Waverly Jong, whose mother Lindo (Karen Huie) shines with Chinese common sense; Elaine Kao exudes quiet frustration as failed pianist June Woo, bucking under high expectations from her headstrong mother Suyuan (Cici Lau) until the revelation of a great family secret; and Ying-Ying St. Clair (Deborah Png) painfully teaches her daughter Lena (Katherine Lee) the value of worldly innocence. The men equally hold their own: Edward Gunawan is endearing as Tin Jong as he woos Lindo, and outrageously fun as the flamboyant Moon Lady. Ben Lin's Canning Woo delivers a profoundly moving monologue about his dead wife's lost daughters, and David Stanbra is the perfect embarrassment as Richard Shields who does all the wrong things when meeting his Chinese in-laws.
Despite the daunting time and location shifts, the emotional power of the stories is palpable; resonating long after the play is over. With Thanksgiving and the winter holidays around the corner, EWP's JOY LUCK CLUB does much to affirm a time of year in the United States in which paying attention to family matters most.
The run of JOY LUCK CLUB has been extended through Sunday, December 21, at the David Henry Hwang Theater at the Union Center for the Arts at 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Performances are on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 2pm. For ticket information, call East West Players at (213) 625-7000 or visit www.eastwestplayers.org.
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