Theater review: Tales from Mount Olympus at Theatre Three in Dallas

by Christopher Soden of John Garcia's The Column

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The puppet play is accessible to children but something in it produces an pervasive, exquisite ache.

Fortunately for us, Bruce Coleman has never lacked for imagination or paths to the fanciful. Whether putting an exotic, sybaritic spin on Dracula or a loopy spoof on camp classics such as Look What's Happened to Pixie Acosta, his vision is bold yet playful, lush yet subdued.

I don't know if anyone else could have pulled off the splendid, comical and swoony, Tales from Mount Olympus (playing in Theatre Too at Theatre Three in Dallas through November 28) – Greek mythology by way of Japanese Bunraku puppetry - for all ages. We all understand that mythology, like other kinds of folklore, with its outlandish imagery and wielding of the supernatural, takes on a different and greater significance once we reach the realms of adulthood. While, as children, the sheer eccentricity of the metaphors (a woman with snakes for hair, men turned into pigs) can be spellbinding.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Coleman's use of vivid color and what is referred to in the program as "Black Light Theatre Techniques from Hungary." The luminous oranges and greens and pinks and yellows cast an avid glow in the cool dark and the effect is awesome. The colors are balanced to absorb our attention and dazzle without being garish. The gods and humans and monsters bob and float and gesture with their jointed, skeletal arms like frantic, mischievous phantoms emerging and returning to the black velvet of night.

Inspired by the children's book D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths, writer and director Coleman has spun an engaging, hypnotic evening of theatrical sorcery, choreographing his puppeteers without cloaking their visages. It's an intriguing and rewarding choice.

They are dressed in black so the puppets are salient, but as our eyes adjust, we see how their facial expressions reflect the attitudes of the characters, adding another thematic layer. The puppets are the most apparent element in this narrative, but Coleman adds witty human touches to nudge and tickle us along the way. You can't help but chuckle when one of the Titans belches after gulping down his latest progeny, lest he be overthrown.

You also can't help but marvel at the grace, poise and precision of the puppeteers (Blake Blair, Katharine Gentsch, Adrien Godinez, Ryan Martin, Christopher Thomas Reynolds, Max Swarner, Lee Jamison Wadley, and Clayton Younkin) as they summon these apparitions for us; the gangly goggle-eyed bird, the wedding dance, the lonely ruler of the underworld longing for a companion. Coleman is able to evoke the subtler, more mature themes from these marvelous texts. They're accessible to children but, like the dance of Persephone's mother in a snow storm, something in them produces an pervasive, exquisite ache.

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