The Arabian Nights, Balaganized for Your Enjoyment
The Arabian Nights is almost indestructible theatre--you just need to tell the stories, after all, and imagination does the rest--and that's lucky for Balagan Theatre because their production of Mary Zimmerman's play ($15, Thurs-Sun, through November 8) takes awhile getting to its feet.
Sometimes Balagan assembles an acting pool that rivals larger theaters' and you watch with only the sheer quirkiness of the play to remind you that this isn't ACT or Intiman. Here they look like a small theatre in a bit over their heads (if reaching for the stars). The 12-person cast has uneven levels of talent and training, and their numbers seem to have sorely stretched director Jake Groshong's resources.
And yet, once it gets rolling, the play gathers enough steam to keep you entertained. We do mean "steam"--it's a sexy, sultry, push-up bra of a play that toys with the thread between violence and desire. Not for nothing is this a play about keeping your head.
Set way back in the day in Iraq, the story goes that sultan Shahryar, cheated on by his first wife, reacts with literal overkill by marrying a new one and murdering her each night. Until, that is, he marries the young and beautiful Scheherezade, who keeps him preoccupied with an endless string of cliffhangers, much like Lost or Heroes. (Which we'd like to kill.) Zimmerman has selected some of the lesser known tales--she doesn't comment with them, or at least, obtrusively. Only at the end does she engage in a ham-handed gesture that is almost unfair to ask a company to pull off.
Stand-outs in the cast include Terri Weagant as Sympathy the Learned, that rarity (for the story) the educated woman. There's a terrific buzz in her vocal production that signals drama, and her characterizations are sharp. Also in fine voice is Curtis Eastwood as the legendary caliph Harun al-Rashid. An inconsistency is whether actors chose to play some imagined, storybook character, or draw upon Middle Eastern tourism, or just chuck the whole thing and play their own experience. Eastwood settled on "moody caliph with modern-day nuances." It works.
The alluring Allison Strickland seems from a more fiery I Dream of Genie outtake, with washboard midriff and too-precious enunciation--but then we have sympathy for her because Scheherezade, as Zimmerman writes her, is almost strictly a narrative voice. We never get to see what makes her tick. Is she a selfless sex kitten or is she a little turned on by this whole sultan-with-a-big-scimitar thing?
As said sultan, Ashley Bagwell left us wanting more--really the whole play turns on the believability of his anguish at his betrayal, his inability to let go of the woundedness. It's like romantic PTSD. But Bagwell growls and pretends at being vicious and there's nothing underneath. Similarly, Jason Harber's Madman, also a romantic victim, offers more play-acting than acting. His other parts, happily, are less mannered and more natural, and so we wonder what director Groshong was thinking. LaChrista Borgers has a scheming, vindictive turn as Perfect Love, the woman scorned, and Wilder Nutting-Heath we mention because we like that name--no, seriously, he's an entertaining Jester, and it is no mean feat to be funny when people demand it of you because, you know, you're called Jester.
This might be a good time to applaud Adaam King and Holly Theriot for the costume design; they've caught the energy of the show with the fantastical, sometimes gravity-defying, nature of the outfits. There is also a good deal of music by James Whetzel and lively sound design by Elvis Titus. So maybe pick a seat not right next to the speakers.
Ashley Bagwell as the murderous Sharyar and Allison Strickland as the story-telling Scheherezade in Balagan Theatre's Arabian Nights. Photo: Adam Sanders.
