The White Snake
The beautiful woman in white strolling through Hangzhou’s west lake district intends only to stay
for a day. It’s not that she doesn’t like it; she does. But in reality she’s a 1,700-year-old snake, and she
really ought to be heading back up the mountain.
In this dramatization of an ancient Chinese fable, the incredibly wise White Snake spirit slithers
down the mountain with her best friend, Green Snake, to see the world. She falls for a good, if gullible,
young man, and uses her magic powers to secure love, prosperity and happiness, until she meets her
match in the bigoted Buddhist monk Fa Hai.
Director and writer Mary Zimmerman, one of America’s truly great artists, began her remarkable
rehearsal process with three pages of script and a carefully culled team of actors and designers. In a
process she likened to Michelangelo’s sculpting with marble, Zimmerman and her team chipped away
at the story until a theatrical experience emerged.
The end result is very beautiful and often funny, but it fell short of my (admittedly high)
expectations. Although many people name The White Snake as their clear favorite this year, it wasn’t
mine. Characterization takes a back seat to imagery and innovation. The show is visually stunning,
with a soft rain of silk scarves, marvelous puppet snakes and a bamboo forest emerging from the
air. Yet I didn’t get to know most of the characters well
enough to feel deeply for them. The story is marvelous, and
the moral Zimmerman concludes with is moving, but the
connection between the two is tenuous.
Bottom Line: Like Michelangelo’s Pieta, it’s not perfect,
but well worth seeing.
Seagull
Real, painful, regret-fi lled life washes through the
insignifi cant summer home, just as the lake washes up on
shores beyond it. Longing for love and recognition, these
characters are selfi sh, shortsighted people messing up their
own lives and the lives of others — just another modern family
at the summer home.
Any excuse you have for not loving Chekov is no longer
being accepted. Director Libby Appel’s lucid translation pulls
every familiar ounce of humanity from the 19th-century
Russian script and lays it lushly across Christopher Acebo’s
enthralling set. As a result, any of these characters could easily
be re-costumed and slipped into an angst-ridden Hollywood
drama. The story springs from the painfully convoluted
relationship between a famous actress and her aspiring writer
son. Vanity wins over love, and heartbreak and longing ripple
though the lives of everyone connected.
Kathryn Meisle and Kate Hurster work wonders with the
language and tempo of the script, and Al Espinosa and Tasso
Feldman create simultaneously hateful and sympathetic artists,
longing for everything they don’t quite have.
Bottom line: Seagull soars.
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