'The Joy Luck Club' takes to the stage in L.A.

Amy Tan's four Chinese-born matriarchs call on ancient spirits for help and repress memories of brutality and heartache. Their daughters are haunted by their mothers' high expectations, their own insecurities, and (being good Asian Americans) model-minority angst. In the end, nearly everyone finds some semblance of luck, if not joy, thanks to encounters with the "other" side -- what Tan has described as the elusive worlds of Fate and Faith.

Ghosts rarely travel in straight lines. Neither does this 1989 novel, a collection of parables and first-person accounts that zigzag between the epic and the intimate, from Old China to 1980s San Francisco. On the page, such stuff is magical. On the stage, it can be maddening.

"In terms of theater, it is really complicated," says Susan Kim, who turned "The Joy Luck Club" into a play more than a decade ago. "It has challenges structurally because so much of it is 'states of mind.' What's effective in the book fights against the way a play works, which is very much about forward movement and characters in conflict and high stakes."

Tan's reliance on multiple narrators makes things tricky, says Jon Lawrence Rivera, who is directing East West Players' revival of Kim's adaptation, which opens Nov. 12. "There's a lot of 'When I was 4 then da-da-da,' " he notes. "What they say may be engaging and profound, but we need to find ways to enhance the theatricality. Not that it needs more razzmatazz. But instead of an actor sitting in a chair talking to the audience, we are asking 'What else can we do?' "

While pondering the answers, Rivera is taking care to preserve the emotional authenticity that has helped "The Joy Luck Club" resonate with audiences. Thanks to the poignant appeal of its central conflict -- the tug-of-war between mothers and daughters -- the novel was an international bestseller. Indeed, its popularity (as well as the release of a 1993 Wayne Wang movie) created another potential headache for Kim and company: comparisons to earlier incarnations.

Given all the challenges, why attempt a "Joy Luck" play? "Apparently, after the book was published, Amy Tan began hearing about unauthorized stage versions," Kim says, "so she thought she would nip this in the bud by granting rights to a reputable theater" -- the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn. The Long Wharf then approached Kim.