STAGE REVIEW : ‘Fairy Tale’ Series Exemplifies the Value of Classic Stories

Pop culture picks through the vast treasure chest of myths and fairy tales, uses what’s “commercial,” throws aside what isn’t, and changes them along the way. Perhaps this myth form is better than none at all--that great myth lover, Joseph Campbell, also loved “Star Wars.” But what do the original stories sound like?

Diane Wolkstein, a leading member of a small, hardy band of storytellers who travel the country and the world, provided a glimpse into this world at a three-evening presentation, “Fairy Tale, Myth and Narrative,” which ended Thursday at the University of Judaism.

Each evening’s program varied a bit. Tuesday’s reading, despite the Judaic surroundings, was catholic in taste and scope. The first tale was about a magic orange tree, while the second was about how a good little girl can outwit an evil stepmother and an acquisitive opportunist. In both, the woods are where life is changed, and they exemplified how a story can best teach lessons in decent behavior.

The lessons were more overt in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Most Incredible Thing of All” (which Wolkstein was to repeat Thursday) and “The Clay Digger,” a compressed saga with an ironic moral. “It’s about hope,” said Wolkstein, who sometimes adds her own post-narrative comments.

These don’t get in the way of the tales, though, because Wolkstein functions equally as a teacher and a performer. She saved her best performances for the concluding tales, an Eskimo adventure as told to film maker Robert Flaherty and a fragment from the Sumerian myth of the goddess Inanna. Wolkstein’s is an oral art, in which she modulates her voice from a booming bass to a willowy whisper, but never for mere effect. Like a good actor serving the play, she serves the story. The story is enough.