By George F. Lee, Star-Bulletin
Wendy Taira, left, as Rose, must bring her mother, An Mei,
played by Blossom Lam, back to reality when her 4-year-
old brother, Bing, drowns.

Tale of ‘Joy’ probes the
depths of women’s sadness

By Betty Shimabukuro
Star-Bulletin

TAKING a part in "The Joy Luck Club" is hard on the psyche. This is a story cast deep in sadness, in misunderstanding, in heart-rending loss.

For the actresses who play the mothers and daughters in this play, the performance wrings so much out of them that they are left emotionally exhausted after every rehearsal.

Wendy Taira, who plays the daughter Rose, had never before been called upon to cry on stage. Here, she must survive a wrenching scene in which a younger brother falls into the sea while in her care -- and she must help her mother accept that he has drowned.

JOY LUCK CLUB On stage: Tonight through Oct. 3 Show times: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. No show Sept. 10 Place: Kumu Kahua Theatre, 46 Merchant St. Tickets: $15 ($12 Thursdays); discounts available Call: 536-4441

"I'm crying at the situation, crying out of guilt, crying because I let my mother down," Taira says.

To make the part real, she imagines her stage mother, Blossom Lam, as her own mother. And the tears come.

Lam, as the mother An Mei, draws upon deaths in her own family -- her parents and her husband. Although those losses are not in the front of her mind on stage, they provide her with an emotional base for her performance.

"Every death you experience has a different level of pain," Lam says.

This moment -- called the "Bing scene," after the young brother's name -- is but one of dozens that make up the tidal sweeps of emotion in "Joy Luck."

Director Reiko Ho brings this very complex story to the Kumu Kahua stage beginning tonight.

"Joy Luck" tells of four mothers from China bringing up their daughters in America, where differences of language, culture and values drive them apart.

Audiences familiar with Amy Tan's book or the 1993 movie will find Susan Kim's play adaptation to be a new experience, Ho says, both in the story itself and in the way the roles are cast.

Ho has the actresses playing several parts, so that characters and stories intertwine. The mothers, for example, play themselves as young women and even children. The daughters play grandmothers in some scenes.

"I wanted the daughters to be part of their mother's stories," Ho says. That way the audience comes to recognize the cycle of pain and healing that repeats through generations.

"Only by looking at the past," she says, "can you direct your eyes at the future."

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