Fresh tales stir new energy

Product of Play Summit spins a modern mix into 'Arabian Nights'

Lisa Bornstein, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, February 2, 2007

Scheherezade is in Times Square at the beginning of 1001, the center of a centrifuge of activity as the rich, a Black Hebrew, a homeless person whirl around her, all partaking of the ornate, layered poetics that open Jason Grote's play.

"There is only one story . . . every word that has ever been or will ever be uttered," she says.

And then, in the first of the many contradictions, hues and fabrics that make up this kaleidoscopic dervish of an invention, Grote begins to unveil the many stories that make up his world.

The first production to come out of Denver Center Theatre Company's New Play Summit is a riot of ideas, experiences and influences. In two hours without an intermission, 1001 brings forth a thrilling night in the theater, one in which the senses and the mind race for a synthesis that never comes.

Like Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, also at DCTC, 1001 is an embrace of storytelling, but one far more artful and creative in form and content. Just as the aged A Thousand and One Arabian Nights sets multiple stories within the frame of a larger one, 1001 uses as its frame Scheherezade and her manipulation of the murderous Persian king Shahriyar. Sharp and strong and seductive, Lanna Joffrey's Scheherezade spins extravagant tales to save her life and those of her fellow virgins.

Her competition isn't much, doofus royalty played as a petulant slow-thinker by Josh Philip Weinstein. Shahriyar is also given to anachronisms in his speech, slips that are terribly funny but also serve as a backbone for the play. "You smell lovely," he tells his bride, "of sandalwood and vanilla, like that moisturizer . . ."

Ancient tales incorporate the many abuses and borrowings of the Arabian and Indian stories, poking fun at Flaubert (whose absurdly exotic courtesan, played by Jeanine Serralles, gives him the least of her love) and Jorge Luis Borges, who encounters Sinbad the Sailor.

Not all of the tales are historical. Joffrey and Weinstein take on contemporary roles as Alan and Dahna, an American Jew and an American Palestinian who fall in love, possibly as much with each other's otherness as with each other. They are imprisoned as much by their histories as by their desire to escape them.

Director Ethan McSweeny meets the playwright's challenge with a production as inventive as the script. Denver Center lavishes its money in ways that do more than decorate; they enhance the story. Trap doors, luxe costumes, the transformative dance of sex under a blue parachute and a Cirque de Soleil death plunge increase the comedy and the otherworldliness, as well as commentary on that exoticism.

Everyone in the cast seems to understand and interpret the many levels of Grote's play. Joffrey and Weinstein are both sympathetic and occasionally immature in their politics; Joffrey is particularly commanding, a woman as actor, not recipient. Serralles brings terrific comedy to the play, particularly as Dahna's nouveau riche immigrant sister and the lisping incestuous Syrian princess.

McSweeny provides one more bit of luxury and energy with DJ Sara Thurston, who mixes contemporary and Eastern strains throughout the evening. Like everything else in this show, it is both ancient and immediate, celebratory and mournful, fact and fiction.