Tales to astonish

Classic storytelling fuels Double Edge Theatre’s ‘The Arabian Nights’

Story by Don Stewart

With a backdrop of a 100 acres of fields and woodlands, the only limits to the productions of Double Edge Theatre are the boundaries of the imagination. This month, a cast of 17 players will lead you to a variety of venues – a rushing stream, a well-tended garden and a post-and-beam barn, a floodlit meadow and a fantastical pond – as the stories of the “The Arabian Nights” unspool. The play, based upon tales known in the Middle Eastern culture as “The 1,001 Nights,” almost didn’t take flight. Although co-director and actor Matthew Glassman and actor Carlos Uriona were strongly attracted to the work, the company’s artistic director, Stacy Klein, had misgivings. “I thought it was too racy,” she said, a few days after a performance.”The book has a lot of sex and sexuality. As discussions continued, the trio became aware of the Russian artist Marc Chagall’s post-World War II color lithographs devoted to the theme of “The Arabian Nights.” The artist, best known for his childlike dreamscapes of fly- ing lovers and airborne animals, won a Venice Biennial award in 1948 for the series. The imagery won Klein over and provided a fresh idea for the play.

Aladdin, played by Adam Bright, is taken on a flying carpet ride with the Genie, played by Hayley Brown in “The Arabian Nights.” “I saw Chagall’s paintings and then realized that it could Carlos Uriona, playing the vizier, uncle of Korsakov’s 1888 classical composition “Scheherazade,” in be much less (about sex) and more about flying and magic,” Aladdin, tricks Aladdin, Adma Bright, into which he set four stories to music. enering a dark cave to find treasure. Klein, the play’s director, said. As the story begins, you’re outdoors in a courtyard Cartoonish to the surreal where actors in simple costume juggle and balance, craft instruments, sell wares, and make music. A dozen feet above What sets Double Edge’s production apart you, Scheherazade (Jeremy Eaton) views the scene from an from much summer fare is that you’re viewing veteran, aerial rig. With a nod to Chagall, throughout the play, actors professional actors at their craft. The company was first will often perform above your head in unusual perspectives. begun in a Boston suburb in 1982 and moved to Ashfield in The stories are also often told against painted backdrops 1994. evocative of Chagall’s style. Internationally known as a world-touring acting troupe, its For the uninitiated, in the original story, the king educational program takes in four apprentices for a two-year (Glassman) has found his new bride to be unfaithful and hitch, as well as 16 internship students annually. Another she is killed. He then believes all women to be impure and 18 students are enrolled for an intensive course during the each new virginal bride he takes invariably ends up on the month of June. Participants this year have included students wrong sides of the grass by morning. Certainly he’s in a rut from Ireland, Bulgaria, Spain, and other central European and, demographically the kingdom is running out of virgins. Countries. Streamlining the story, Scheherazade, as his new bride, Productions that may be performed in Poland, Romania, chooses to entertain the king with nightly cliffhanger tales South America, or Asia may require a year or two or to be continued the next evening. This dramatically hampers preparation. Creating “The Arabian Nights,” Glassman said, his homicidal urges while sparing her life for almost three was a one-month marathon. years. As with any great plot, you’re not certain as to the “This is more like a sprint,” he said. “It’s every day that outcome. you’re running very hard. Therefore, you try to do each day “Join me!” the vizier (Uriona) says as the play begins.”I’m This scene in Double Edge Theatre’s “Arabian Nights” is inspired by the illustrations of Marc Cha- with as much creativity and productivity as possible.” about to put an end to your uncertainty. gall. It shows Jeremy Louise Eaton as Sheherazade (on trapeze), Carlos Uriona as the vizier and Mathew Although a later, indoor production of the play may carry Glassman (reclining) as king a PG rating, the current 80-minute work provides theatrical Thematic pervasiveness energy and excitement that even attentive 10-year olds would find enjoyable. Scenes range from the cartoonish and There’s no argument that “The Arabian Nights” has been the surreal to the cinematic, A fisherman’s family is depicted as influential, and probably more pervasive, as Shakespeare as cardboard cutouts that spring up suddenly from behind in modern storytelling. You can trace a spider work of themes tall grasses with a baby’s cry. In the theater’s 2,400 square- that have influenced writers as diverse as Edgar Allan Poe foot barn, Sinbad’s seas roll and crest through the clever (“The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade”) and manipulations of enormous bedspreads. novelist Jorge Luis Borges to L. Frank Baum (“The Wizard Again outdoors, in the darkness, a floodlit field conjured of Oz”) aand even Stephen King (“Misery”). up a nightmare of Sinbad’s, when he sees the Dancing Dead, The first English translation seems to pop up around 1706 tall haunting puppets off in the distance. The late filmmaker and fragments of original stories found in Syria date as far Federico Fellini would feel at home in this moment. back as 800 AD. As children, we learn of Ali Baba, Aladdin, There are whirling dervishes, a magic carpet ride, a and his lamp and “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad.” These cartwheeling temptress and, well, most everything but a stories are indeed genuine to the Middle Eastern culture, but Prince Kamar, played by Todd Trebour, embraces his princess, played by Hannah Jarrell, as demons bet hookah pipe. The admirable performances of Glassman, only appear in later additions to the text. on who loves the other more. Uriona and Eaton are well supported by the athleticism and The complexity of “The 1,001 Nights” influence is that it charm of Hayley Brown and the three dashing characters provides the first known form of several narrative dynamics, unreliable narrator, the first murder mystery, the use of the story- performed by Adam Bright. such as the “framing” device. Sinbad’s heroic tales are within-a-story, and a whole smorgasbord of plot mechanics that As to the play’s message, Glassman said,”I think perhaps framed around him, just like the episodic journeys of “Alice can fill up an expensive semester of film script writing courses it’s the importance of the imagination. Regardless of its in Wonderland”, or, for that matter, James Bond. “The Arabian Nights” are deep in our culture, ranging from a rhyme or reason, it’s beauty and depths that can be found Within the tales there is also foreshadowing, the use of the recent mini-series, numerous films and rock band lyrics to Rimsky- with one’s imagination.”