The Joy Luck Club

Strength is an heirloom passed from mother to daughter in Amy Tan's 1989 short story collection The Joy Luck Club. Connected by characters and stretching over decades, each non-linear story focuses on pivotal moments in the lives of four Chinese women and their American-born daughters as they deal with power, identity and cultural expectations. The stories inspired a 1993movie, and were adapted for the stage by Susan Kim that same year. The play premiered at Pan Asian Rep in 1999, and has returned in an elegant productionat the Julia Miles Theater.

Sticking very closely to Tan's style, Kim's script is lyrical and graceful, reveling in Tan's poetic language. Indeed, much of the play's dialogue is lifted directly from the short stories, and much of Tan's narration is converted into monologues that each character delivers directly to the audience. Dramatically speaking, it's a risky move: switching from dialogue to monologue and back again can be awkward and even alienating for an audience. But this is a play about sharing stories and learning from the past, and by letting the characters speak to them directly, Kim turns her audience into the next generation of listeners, making them active participants in the play.

If Kim's script suffers from any weaknesses, they would lie in the necessary editing between book and stage. Each story (and, by proxy, each scene) focuses on enlightenment and emotional growth, and by condensing the collection into a reasonable running time, some of the emotional transitions feel rushed. Fortunately,it's a small price to pay for a very faithful and powerful adaptation of a landmark book.

The eight actresses playing the mothers and daughters portray their characters at ever stage of their lives, from childhood to adulthood and, for the mothers, to old age. Never resorting to clichés, they make these transitions believable, letting each woman at each stage in her life be a fully-realized, three-dimensional character. Rosanne Ma is particularly memorable as the downtrodden Rose, whose growth from weak sapling to strong oak is one of the more powerful journeys in the play. Wai Ching Ho is heartbreaking as her mother, An-Mei, who at various points in the play must cope with the death of a son and the emotional crippling of her daughter.Sacha Iskra is poignant as the overly submissive Lena, and nicely captures the character's quiet desperation. Lydia Gaston, as her mother, gives an equally strong performance that nicely parallels Ms. Iskra's, and lets us see how much mothers live in daughters.

Tisa Chang, who directed the 1999 production as well, gets some very strong performances from her actors, but never quite finds the rhythm in the play—a similar problem she faced in last season's Tea. Still, the production's strengths far outweigh the few missteps, and Ms. Chang scores many emotional bullseyes. Kaori Akazawa's sets are simple and effective, and Carol Pelletier's costumes beautifully evoke eras and cultures.

There is much to admire in this strong adaptation of a modern classic, and anyone who has struggled to understand a parent or communicate to a child will find something familiar in this emotional production.

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