STAGE REVIEW : Vignettes of Family Ties at the Itchey Foot

One of the things the Mark Taper Forum’s literary cabaret at the Itchey Foot Ristorante does best is introduce us to work we might not otherwise discover.

It was that way with “Darlinghissima,” the private correspondence of Janet Flanner and Natalia Danesi Murray; that way with “Spunk,” George C. Wolfe’s raffish adaptation of stories by Zora Neale Thurston; that way with the Taper’s “A Christmas Memory,” which returns every year at holiday time to delight us.

And it is that way again with “The Joy Luck Club,” the current Taper offering at the Itchey Foot. This excerpt from Amy Tan’s novel of the same name, adapted and directed by Brian Nelson, is a slender piece, but sturdy as a reed.

It is a reminiscence shared by a mother and daughter and imprinted with the cultural tracery that has pursued them across oceans and generations.

The world is as inescapably Chinese as it is American for An-Mei (Natsuko Ohama) and her reluctant daughter Rose (Lisa Lu). For An-Mei, heritage is securely lodged in her DNA. For Rose, in the throes of separation and divorce from her doctor Ted (the all-American boy she married from Tarrytown, Pa.), cultural mythology is something she consciously rises to meet--only to discover that it was always there.

The hourlong dialogue between these women at the Itchey Foot, shows us the divergence, scope and tenderness of lives separated by time and custom, but bound by this inscripted ancestral link. “Your mother is in your bones,” admonishes An-Mei. Ineluctably.

This “Joy Luck Club” is a series of vignettes snatched from those lives, none more telling perhaps than the story of Matthew, Mark, Luke and Bing--Rose’s siblings, whose very names are proof positive of the kaleidoscopic American cultural pastiche.

Bing’s death by drowning, An-Mei’s anguishing attempts to bring him back from the sea by appeasing an angry god, her steely and insular rejection of faith against fate--all make for an intimate glimpse into a world governed by unfamiliar rules. Part myth, part tradition and part poetry.

However, it is the final moments of “Joy Luck Club” that deliver its wallop: in a delicate tale of three generations of women--grandmother, mother, daughter--we are invited to participate in a rite of matriarchal passage that places all that has gone before in moving and proper perspective.

Tan has a deft mind and a revealing hand that reaches deep into the psyche of her characters without violating them. She is astutely served by Nelson, who directed with a contemplative distance, almost a coolness, and by Ohama and Lu who make the relationship--and especially its irreconcilable differences--breathe.

The presentation (musically enhanced now and then by snatches of Lucia Wong’s “House of Sleeping Beauties”) has the simplicity of the twin-podium concert reading and the complexity of wisdom.

All very Confucian.

“The Joy Luck Club” will not send you reeling out of the Ristorante (as in having had a heady experience), but days later, it may find you reaching for the novel.

At 801 W. Temple St., 6 p.m., next Saturday and Jan. 7 only. Dinner service (optional) is from 4 to 5:15 p.m. Tickets: $8; (213) 972-7373.