The Joy Luck Club

Overall, THE JOY LUCK CLUB is a well-designed amalgam of the verbal and nonverbal, the symbolic and the real. This is a play which will resonate with audiences in a very personal way.

At the Playhouse, the performance is enhanced by original music by Nathan Wang, projection designs by Yee Eun Nam, and by colorful and moving dance scenes that close each of its two acts.

all aspects of it are high quality, especially the acting, which sees every actor ably play either themselves at different ages or multiple characters. Or, in some cases, both. I’m especially impressed that many of the women let us know that they are now portraying themselves as children by just a flick of the head or a different smile. It’s quite impressive.

Imperfect as its stage adaptation may be, when Jing-Mei finally takes her mother’s place among her aunties as a member of the Joy Luck Club, even audiences who may have gotten lost in a plethora of plot lines past and present can expect to exit the Sierra Madre Playhouse moved by the emotional journey they have experienced.

The Joy Luck Club is a tender story that speaks to the American experience of adjusting to a new life while carrying the wounds from an old one. Its style makes it a challenging book to transform into a play. Sierra Madre wonderfully expands upon Pan Asian Repertory Theatre’s original production. Some fine tuning and a more steadily dynamic presentation could elevate this show into something incredible.