A robust Arabian Nights

Ted Brellisford, the Hamilton Spectator Jennifer Graham, Left, and Jenny Rae, Right, With Mike Wieranga and Nea Reid (Background) in Arabian Nights.

More than anything, Mary Zimmerman's evocative journey through the 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights is about the redemptive power of love.

If along the way she attempts to beguile us with erotic notions of wicked Sheiks, cunning slave girls and exotic adventures she can hardly be blamed. These are, after all, stories that resonate with love, lust and an ever-ready bawdy sense of humour.

As in Metamorphoses, her 2002 triumph for the Broadway stage, Zimmerman plays fast and loose with time and space, sprawling her drama across a stunning landscape of the imagination. She is in many ways a consummate storyteller.

Now, how much you admire the sort of organic theatre Zimmerman creates is probably dependent on your willingness to accept cobbled improvisation as viable theatre. It's the sort of thing universities love to present as part of their theatre exercises. And that's really the place Zimmerman comes from. Witness her long association with Lincoln, Nebraska's Northwestern University.

Creative spirit is what Zimmerman is surely about -- an essential force resonating through Village Theatre Waterdown's robust production of her Arabian Nights' play. Director Lisbie Rae and a crack design team have provided a lavish and exotic terrain for Zimmerman's play to sprawl across.

Rosie Pypker has dressed the cast in gorgeous materials that both drape and hug the body, suggesting both beauty and character traits.

Nikola Patti's set, a marvel of ingenuity, stretches the walls of this small, cramped theatre space, to suggest a vast palace of elegant, visual delights.

Beautifully draped materials create the illusion of an exotic bed chamber where King Shahryar can tease the seductive Scheherezade into telling her life-saving, ingenious tales. The forestage is painted superbly to represent the shifting sands of an ever- changing desert. Flanking the main palace chamber are antirooms decorated in brilliant blue tile where Deborah McIvor's authentic and mesmerizing music provides aural amplification for the goings-on centre stage.

These include parables of the weakness of the human flesh. Sins of lust, pride and greed are told in stories that drift and intertwine, sometimes locked together by simple song and dance.

Choreographer Janice Lee contributes hypnotic, authentic-looking movement that never makes troublesome demands on the cast, yet manages to look good.

A large cast has intermittent success matching dramatically the power of Zimmerman's exotic text. Mike Wierenga makes a handsome Shahryar and Nea Reid a beautiful, hypnotic Scheherezade. He could be more forceful suggesting the lustiness of a feral and driven man. She could be more clear of speech, matching her physical perfections with more resonant vocal power and grace.

Nicole Bedford and Joey van Alten stand out as youngsters with likable potential. Jennifer Graham, Rachel Janosi and Joe Bootsma work hard to give assorted characters necessary erotic punch.

Choral speaking used throughout could be better in sync. The dramatic pace of many scenes could be less measured so they might match the elegant visual intensity created.

The final cliche of having bombs rain down on Baghdad, with sirens proclaiming the swift and sudden way life can be mercilessly swept away, is a Zimmerman excess I could do without. Balance against this though, moments of stirring beauty in which the human spirit finds spiritual revivification from the dust and dross of daily existence.

This is a brave, worthy production of a difficult piece of theatre, orchestrated effectively by Lisbie Rae and her producer-husband Mike. I'm not sure where else in this area you'd see anything like Zimmerman's provocative stage style.

The Arabian Nights continues at Village Theatre Waterdown, Memorial Hall, 317 Dundas St. E., Nov. 17 to 19, 24 to 26. Call 905-690-7889.

Gary Smith has written on theatre and dance for The Hamilton Spectator for more than 25 years.