STAGE REVIEW : ‘KING STAG’: THE LIFE IN A FAIRY TALE

“Enchanting” is a risky word to use about a play--what enchants you may strike me as precious--but it suits the legerdemain of “The King Stag.”

This is the first of the two shows that the American Repertory Theatre of Boston is doing at the Doolittle Theatre this week under the auspices of the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts. (Dom De Lillo’s “The Day Room” will be reviewed in Friday’s Times.) It is a fairy tale and the temptation is to say that it’s for children of all ages.

In fact, some people don’t respond to fairy tales even when they’re 4 years old. It’s a fib, they say. There’s no such thing as an enchanted stag. Parrots don’t really talk. An old man can’t be a handsome king under a spell.

If that’s the reader’s position, “The King Stag” won’t have appeal. It’s for those who are old enough to know how much truth a fairy tale can contain, in disguise, of course.

The first delight at the Doolittle is for the eye. Though the actors are live, “The King Stag” is, in a sense, a puppet show. The characters move with the slight rigidity of mechanical figures, wonderfully dressed by Julie Taymor. (The story is laid in a vaguely Persian court, but the costumes pick up accents from all over, even from the world of Batman.)

Splendid use is made of actual puppets as well, also designed by Taymor--life-sized ones manipulated by “invisible” assistants. (And so they become. The show is about theater magic as well as the real-world kind.) The two enchanted stags are puppets, as light and transparent as kites. So is the lank old man.

Will the king’s beautiful betrothed (Diane D’Aquila) recognize this ill-joined bag of bones as her own true love, transmogrified by the wicked prime minister (Richard Grusin)? It wouldn’t be a proper fairy tale if she didn’t. We aren’t deriding a form here, as in those campy versions of “Cinderella” that so degrade children’s theater. We are fulfilling a form.

That means that actress D’Aquila will give her character the respect that she’d give Cordelia in “King Lear,” without forgetting that the style of the piece is commedia dell’ arte . It means that actor Grusin will give an edge of real spite to the prime minister, making him something more than a figure of fun--although certainly that, too.

And it means that the prime minister won’t get off with a slap on the wrist when his plot is foiled (with the help of the talking parrot). He ends up squashed as a bat. Fairy tales don’t fool around.

Albert Bermel adapted the tale from the Italian of Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806) and he has thrown in, or allowed, lots of topical ad-libs for the king’s valet, played by Harry S. Murphy with a slight tip of the cap to Art Carney’s Ed Norton. It’s interesting to note how the wisecracks don’t jar the delicacy of the story. Rather they give the show an earthy American base, keeping things from becoming too precious, too Theatre du Soleil. Why not throw in some L.A. cracks, since that’s the gig?

The visual highlight of Andrei Serban’s production is the hunt in the forest. A screen displays (as in Indian puppetry) the shadows of fanciful creatures that might have emerged from an elegant prehistoric swamp--flying pterodactyls and the like. Other birds “fly” across the stage on sticks waved by the assistants. Where are the trees? Don’t need them.

All in all, Serban’s production is the deftest piece of its kind since the Piccolo Teatro di Milano’s “The Servant of Two Masters” by Gozzi’s old rival Goldoni. And this one’s in English, although those of us in the balcony had some questions about that during the prologue, which the actors confided to the floor. Otherwise, “King Stag” is enchanting theater--for the enchantable.

‘THE KING STAG’ Carlo Gozzi’s comedy, performed by American Repertory Theatre at the Doolittle Theatre presented by UCLA Center for the Performing Arts. English version Albert Bermel. Director Andrei Serban. Sets Michael H. Yeargan. Costumes, masks, puppets Julie Taymor. Lighting Jennifer Tipton. Original music Elliot Goldenthal. Percussionist Russ Gold. Stage manager John Grant-Phillips. With John Bottoms, Rodney Hudson, Harry S. Murphy, Isabell Monk, Jack Stehlin, Richard Grusin, Pamela Gien, Jeremy Geidt, Diane D’Aquila, Benjamin Evett, Thomas Derrah, Hilary Chaplain, Joshua Lehrer, Jeff Miller, Rima Miller, Diane Wortis. Plays at 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday; matinees Saturday, Sunday, 2 p.m. Tickets $6-$24. 1615 N. Vine St., (213) 825-9261.