‘SOJOURN AT ARAFAT’ : POETRY IN SEARCH OF A PLAY

One wishes that “Sojourn at Ararat,” an affectionate burst of Armenian poetry at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, were more than it is.

Gerald Papasian and Nora Ekserjan Armani offer an effusive, even ardent reading of “a play in verse created from translations of Armenian poetry through the ages” (they translated with Paul Mackley, who also directed).

But to call “Sojourn” a play is to stretch the definition. The poems themselves are distinguished by tenderness and simplicity. Their images are lucid and often arresting: “Clear as a tear of happiness. . . . The night (is) a feast of luminous roads. . . . A waist slender as a pine. . . . Your heart as harsh as a stone. . . . “

The closest thing to dramatic development here comes with the story of a shepherd who goes to buy honey--an ordinary event that accidentally turns into a deadly free-for-all.

For the better part of the rest of the 90 minutes, Papasian and Armani give us a labor of love more distinguished by its sincerity than its craft. It is fundamentally a feast for the already persuaded who can forgive the actors’ overexultations. Nostalgic references to “an old, lost land which my soul in exile still desires . . . “ speak with immediacy to those who know the feeling firsthand. “I am impossibly away; I cannot catch myself; I cannot reach myself” is a harsher and more vivid cry of displacement.

Perhaps a rigorous, less busy approach to the richness of the text would allow its more remarkable words to speak for themselves. A poet who says, “Keep paradise for the Turks; send us to hell” has long ago rejected sentimentality. It is what Papasian, Armani and Mackley also need to do.

Performances at 1089 N. Oxford Ave. run Sundays, 8 p.m., until May 3. Tickets $10, (213) 466-2916.