AT POWERHOUSE : ‘TARANTULA’ REMAINS AN ENIGMA

Bob Dylan’s book, “Tarantula,” has been described by one of his biographers, Robert Shelton, as “an enigma wrapped in a question mark. Some of it is automatic writing, most of it is musical and all of it offers more when read aloud.”

How would it play on stage? Darrell Larson has been working for years on a multimedia version of “Tarantula,” and it has finally opened at the Powerhouse in Santa Monica. Its slides and computer images are effective, and Larson’s cast has a fine time with the text (often set to music, not by Dylan.) But “Tarantula’s” agenda remains a mystery.

That’s not necessarily a drawback in the theater. Gertrude Stein’s “In Circles” has an equally random text. However, in terms of pure sound, Stein’s lines are round and full of juice, while Dylan’s are dry and a little flat--not nearly so much fun as wordplay.

Moreover, “In Circles” had a connecting thread in performance, something about a loner who forever finds himself shut out of the magic circle. “Tarantula’s” thread seems to involve James Morrison, as a guy in a business suit fallen among raffish characters, and becoming one of their number, at least in his imagination. But we lose track of him before it’s over.

It wouldn’t be appropriate to turn “Tarantula” into a traditional narrative, but the experience would have more mystery and power if we had a stronger sense of its theme. Like Peer Gynt, our hero is on some kind of dream journey. What’s the terminus?

At the Powerhouse, the show plays like a funky musical revue whose numbers could be done in any order at all. The best number for the eye begins the second act: “Cowboy Angel Blues,” with its image of Dr. Freud (Chuck Cochran) as a bowler-hatted figure from a Magritte painting--except for his big red foot, borrowed from the Road Runner.

The best numbers for the ear tend to involve Susan Krebs looking down from the second floor at the madness below and commenting on it as if she had seen it a million times. (The cast acts as though Dylan’s text were as easy to understand as the lines of a TV commercial.)

Krebs’ idiom here is the blues, but she seems perfectly cheerful, as is everybody else in the show--if there are dark moments in Dylan’s book, they don’t surface here. Even a rape scene is staged as if the participants were just goofing around, like kids on the playground.

Another striking image: Peter Kors “flying” across the stage in an ingenious wire contraption that swings out of the wall. (Jonathan Gordon is listed as the show’s structural engineer.) Even when the images on the video monitors are dire--burning tenements, Viet Nam, nuclear tests--”Tarantula” is a playful show, and the audience enjoys its surface, without worrying about its underneath. I wanted more connections.

‘TARANTULA’

Darrell Larson’s stage adaptation of Bob Dylan’s book, at the Powerhouse, Santa Monica. Presented by Totem and the Tarantula Society. Producer Jeanne Field. Powerhouse artistic director Scott Belyea. Director Larson. Music director Milton Greenhill. Music by Greenhill, Niche Saboda, Keith Kreger, Peter Kors, Susan Krebs. Choreographer Eddie Glickman. Lighting Mark Grossman. Costumes Belnida Williams Sayadian. Set Liz Young and Catherine Hardwick. Video sequences Susanna Styron. Slides Montxo Algora. Stage manager and construction engineer Jonathan Gordon. Construction assistant Aaron Zajac. Assistant to the producer C.E. Stewart. Archival footage Petrified Fils, N.Y. Sound Simon Dord. With James Morrison. Patrie Allen, Susan Krebs, Niche Saboda, Katherine Smythe, Will Utay, Keith Kreger, Peter Kors, Chuck Cochran, Danny de la Paz, Jack Nance, Bob Styron-Larson. Plays at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays. Runs indefinitely. Tickets $15. 3116 Second St., Santa Monica. (213) 466-1767.