East meets West meets East at the East West Players
By Ed Rampell
Susan Kim’s play currently at the venerable East West Players adapts Amy Tan’s groundbreaking bestselling 1989 novel, The Joy Luck Club.
A notable 1993 film directed by Wayne Wang and produced by Oliver Stone, this multi-generational, multi-culti saga about four Chinese immigrant mothers and their Chinese-American daughters is richly complex, with numerous storylines with divergent elements that are further complicated as Joy veers from the comic to the tragic, and jumps around in time and space. The plot further thickens when Cold War tensions between Communist “Red China” and capitalist America are factored into the equation, along with a dose of mysticism.
Onscreen the divergent plot points are largely held together by the universal theme of parent-child relations, and in a settler society where most are descendants of “foreigners” who came to the New World, the commonality of the émigré experience. Onscreen, and I suspect in Tan’s novel, the Mahjong game played by the four “aunties,” et al, is also a leitmotif and recurring theme that serves as a metaphor to unify the tale’s wide ranging strands. The title is derived from these games that serve as a meeting place, discussion group, feasting opportunity, etc., for the aunties, and then some.
To successfully pull this complicated comedy drama off onstage requires a focus with laser-like precision. For some reason, in Kim’s adaptation the pivotal mahjong games more or less vanish after the first act. Following eight major and numerous minor characters presents difficulties, especially, perhaps, for theater-goers who do not belong to the ethnic group being depicted. Those who have not read the novel or seen the movie version may also have a harder time keeping track of the action that jumps from China to California, the 1930s to a more recent era, and so on.
John Binkley’s set design, however, creatively seeks to solve this problem. Much of the set is cleverly fashioned like an unfolding scroll; the names of the dramatis personae whose tale is being related at that moment is projected on it, along with a sort of headline encapsulating her storyline at that point.
Despite all of these challenges, Tan’s tale shines forth. The generational clashes between mother and daughter, intensified in a cross-cultural cauldron, remain touching.
During the production long buried memories of my Ukraine-born grandmother bubbled their way up from my unconscious to the surface of my mind. The yearning of the American-born to reconnect with their ancestral roots and heritage is a powerful theme. The conflicted daughters, who are strangers in a strange land, must cope with their quest for identity, as they seek to find out: Are they Chinese, American or some sort of amalgam of the two? Of course, this has implications for their private lives, as three daughters marry Caucasian men.
Some sharp, insightful and witty lines of dialogue ring true. A discussion of fate leads to the observation that “faith is just the illusion that you’re in control.” Along these same lines, when one of the aunties works in a fortune cookie bakery, an employee quips that they are determining the fortunes of others.
A live musical ensemble enhances the theatrical experience by playing mood-setting Western and Chinese music onstage. However, the sense that viewers are watching through the proverbial “fourth wall” is undercut: When one character cuts her arm with a knife, no blood is drawn; invisible food is served at a dinner: and so on, undermining the realism audiences used to cinematic special effects and naturalism on the stage and screen have come to take for granted.
The stereotypical notion that East Asians are highly competitive, overemphasize accomplishment and are a “race” of overachievers is dealt with, too. However, the play also shows that the aunties were atypical of 1937 China (the year Imperial Japan invaded China -- when the play sort of begins) in their class origins. One auntie describes herself as “the most rich in the village.”
Ultimately, the play returns to the Joy Luck Club itself, if not to a mahjong match per se. The three surviving aunties pool their mahjong winnings to enable Jing-Mei Woo (Elaine Kao), the daughter of the sole deceased mother, to travel to China and meet, for the first time, her twin sisters. She becomes a daughter for the return home and is lucky to discover the joy of her Chinese-ness.
In this production skillfully directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera, Karen Huie depicts Lindo Jong and Celeste Den depicts her daughter Waverly Jong; Deborah Ping is Ying-Ying St. Clair, Katherine Lee is her daughter Lena St. Clair; Emily Kuroda portrays An-Mei Hsu, while Jennifer Chang plays her daughter Rose Hsu; and Cici Lau plays Suyuan Woo, with Kao as her daughter Jing-Mei. The entire cast performs multiple roles; however the star, but of course, remains Ms. Amy Tan. Bravo!
The Joy Luck Club plays at the East West Players, David Henry Hwang Theater, 120 Judge John Aiso St. in Downtown L.A.’s Little Tokyo, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. through Dec. 7. For more info: 213/625-7000; info@eastwestplayers.org.
