Although no show is ever completely “;ready”; for opening night, tonight's debut of Diamond Head Theatre's production of “;The Joy Luck Club”; can hardly come soon enough for Elisa Dulce.

Better known perhaps for her work as a television actress—you've seen her in “;Hawaii Five-0,”; “;Magnum P.I.,”; “;Jake and the Fatman”; and “;Baywatch Hawaii”;—she's looking forward to opening night for several reasons.

“;It's a beautiful story, and I think all of us on stage have a passion to (act); and when you have this wonderful play and a brilliant director, the creativity just flows, and you're fortunate to be here as a team,”; Dulce said last week by telephone after a late-night rehearsal.

The show, “;Joy Luck”; for short, is playwright Susan Kim's adaptation of Amy Tan's best-selling novel about the experiences of four Chinese women in the 20th century and their problematic relationships with their Chinese-American daughters.

The daughters generally have no idea how bad things were in China and know little, if anything, about the horrendous hardships their mothers had to overcome. The mothers, meanwhile, worry about the Americanization of their daughters.

Dulce plays An Mei Hsu, with Kathryn Mariko Lee as her daughter, Rose Hsu Jordan. The other mother/daughter pairs are Denise Aiko Chinen (Lindo Jong) and Aya Ohara (Waverly Jong), Karen Kuioka Hironaga (Suyuan Woo) and Jennifer Yee (Jing Mei Woo), and Blossom Lam Hoffman (Ying Ying St. Clair) and Julia Nakamoto (Lena St. Clair).

Men—Chinese and Caucasian alike—are often the cause of unhappiness from one generation to the next. Sherwood “;Woody”; Chock, Ron Encarnacion, Vincent Fitzgerald, Kevin Keaveney, Alan Picard and Scott Francis Russell portray the villains and borderline villains. Reiko Ho directs.

Tragic though many of the women's experiences are, “;Joy Luck”; has been a hit with mainstream America as a novel, a film and a play. DHT has already added performances to the run.

“;We did ('Joy Luck') twice at Kumu (Kahua), and so this is the third time,”; Dulce continued. “;There's not that many Asian stories (in theater), and something of this caliber, and something that is so popular and well known.”;

Dulce's appearance at DHT is a revival for her career as stage actress. She had a key role in the Actors Group production of “;Miso”; last summer, but before that her last local stage role was Lindo Jong in Kumu Kahua's 1999 production. She reprised the role when Kumu Kahua staged the show later in the 1999-2000 season.

“;I don't do too many plays,”; Dulce said. “;I think the first time I was on the Diamond Head Theatre stage was when I was 18, and we did 'The Sword and the Samurai' and then 'Joy Luck' (at Kumu Kahua) and then 'Miso,' and here I am back with 'Joy Luck' again.”;

The DHT production is a reunion for Dulce, Hoffman, Chock and Ho, who directed the first Kumu Kahua production (Harry Wong III directed the second staging). And Dulce isn't the only one returning in a different role—Hoffman played An-Mei Hsu at Kumu Kahua.

Playing a different character “;gives you something different to look at,”; Dulce said.

“;We wondered if Reiko was going to give us our old roles, but it's been pretty exciting ... to let your creative juices go. It's just really been fascinating to see what (Ho) has done. She's changed it. Of course it's a bigger theater so there's so much more to work with because of the size of the stage.

“;I think the people will be really pleased to see how she's incorporated that and made use of the people on the stage. It's very different from the first time we've done it. It's going to be very nice.”;