STAGE REVIEW : UCI’S RARE GLIMPSE INTO MIDDLE ENGLISH THEATER

UC Irvine forcefully breathes new life into ancient stories in the second installment of its three-year cycle of medieval plays, “The Plaie Called Corpus Christi, Part II: The Nativity.” There’s one last chance to catch this glimpse of medieval life tonight at 8 in the UCI Fine Arts Village. (Information: (714) 856-6616).

The “mystery plays,” as they were called, took Biblical stories out of the sanctuaries and into the small villages of England to be presented in the vernacular of the day. The carefully adapted text by director Robert Cohen, dramaturgist Edgar Schell, Stephen Barney and Linda Georgianna compresses seven of these Middle English epics into two hours and 40 minutes. Which is not to say that “The Nativity” isn’t tough-going at times; it turns out that 14th-Century playwrights can be as long-winded as modern ones, and while the rhymed language is eminently graceful, it is not always easy to follow.

But the major contribution of “The Nativity” lies in its rare glimpse into the genealogy of the English-speaking theater. These plays, which ran their course between the 14th and 16th centuries, spring from a society poised on the edge of a cultural explosion and a cataclysmic challenge of church authority. Their anonymous playwrights forged a new relationship between liturgy, poetry and music, making the Bible come alive for the illiterate villagers that made up their audiences.

Director Cohen and his durable, talented cast make sure it comes alive for contemporary audiences, too, injecting a fresh sense of discovery on this well-traveled, occasionally arduous road to Bethlehem. The focus in both the text and the performances is firmly fixed on the humans’ perceptions of all these unusual heavenly interventions; these characters are ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Diane Robinson’s glowing Mary is just as surprised as her neighbors when the angel Gabriel appears at her door; Steven Benson’s broadly drawn Joseph is less than thrilled when his virginal wife suddenly turns up pregnant, and Ron Hastings’ ranting Herod is comical and evil by turns, pushed toward blind rage by an even blinder ambition.

Fallibilities abound, and while they let us laugh, they also serve as a reminder that these people chosen for greatness by God were human, too. That relevance survives the travel through time in this thoughtful staging.

The time travel begins outside the theater, where the crowd is offered medieval food, drink and song before the cast leads everyone onto the dark, yawning space of the Fine Arts Village Theatre stage. A wooden platform rises center stage, bathed in eerily effective smoke, with the audience seated on either side of the long, narrow playing space. The rough-hewn set looks authentically crude, but it actually conceals an array of modern gadgets, including platforms that rise and sink, footbridges that emerge from the floorboards and a pull-out manger. The proximity to the players is a real advantage, since the physical performances provide welcome clues in deciphering the Middle English text.

The momentum only stumbles once, at the start of the shepherds’ story, one of the few times the play’s language becomes a real distraction. But the narrative recovers with an amusing subplot about a missing sheep, the journey of the Magi and the flight into Egypt, ending with a bone-chilling, literal final image as Death comes to claim Herod and the jaws of hell open up to swallow his entire court. (Pageantry had its place in this early entertainment along with the human perspective, too.) Death then turns to remind the audience that he will pay us all a visit, sooner or later--conveniently leaving the door open for next year’s chapter, the Passion and Doomsday.