Magic and Mischief in the Middle East

A few days ago Adam, Petrice, and I went to see "Arabian Nights," Mary Zimmerman's new play at the Berkeley Rep. I had seen her earlier works, "Metamorphoses" and "Argonautika," which were beautifully retold Greek myths, and had very high expectations for this latest production.

The first thing we see upon entering the theater is a pile of dull gray dropcloths, sitting in a misshapen heap on the stage, a barren concrete wall as backdrop. Two drummers meet at the center of the pile and begin a steady rhythm. Actors emerge from the edges of the audience and begin flinging away the cloths, uncovering a sumptious collection of rugs, pillows, and drapes, which they unfurl outward in exuberant choreography to the drummers' accelerating beat.  Exotic lanterns descend from the ceiling, filling the space with a sensuous glow. The stale stage has suddenly been transformed into a warm and welcoming hearth, inviting the audience in. It's like opening the cover of a dusty old book and revealing the wondrous world hidden inside.

From there, the play leads us through 1001 nights of tales from Baghdad, the "city of peace and poets," woven intricately together by a cunning storyteller to a captive audience of one, her husband and would-be murderer. King Shahryar, having been betrayed by his first wife on their wedding night, vows to bed a new virgin each night and then kill her in the morning. His latest bride Scheherezade has come up with a scheme to save herself from this unfortunate fate: begin to tell a captivating bedtime story, then stop at the most crucial moment before dawn, thus forcing the king to keep her alive so she can finish the tale. No Disneyfied Aladdin stories here, instead you get sensuous sirens, bisexual nymphomaniacs, epic flatulence, and an illuminating debate on the Koran that should be required viewing for everyone in the U.S. (Watching the show, it reminded me of the animated film Persepolis in the way it depicted a different side of Middle Eastern culture, one that is easily lost in the current political climate.)

The stories unfold into another, then another, an endless Chinese puzzle box that barely stops to catch its breath before plunging into the next narrative, moving seamlessly in tone from sultry to silly to sad to sublime. As Adam would say, "It's great for someone with ADD like me!"

Unfortunately the constant switching of channels has the opposite effect on me, in that I begin to lose interest when there is no larger narrative arc to follow. This becomes more evident during the play's second half, which feels a bit uneven. There is one particular section where the actors seem to be losing steam and the scene devolves into a WTF?! moment (judging from the looks on Petrice's and Adam's faces, I figure they were just as confused). But at the end, after being taken on a whirlwind tour of a magical and mythical Middle East, an actor's innocuous whistling slowly evolves into the impending shrill of an air siren, and you are brought back to the ugly reality of present-day Iraq with the play's final image etched indelibly in your brain: of bodies being blown to dust by the wind, their stories forever gone.