MUSIC REVIEW / L.A. FESTIVAL : Javanese Puppets Recount ‘Mahabharata’ Tale

In contrast to the other ways “The Court Art of Java” has told the “Mahabharata” story of Arjuna’s Wedding for the Los Angeles Festival, the puppetry of Wayang Kulit seems to be a genuine, transcultural people’s art. Certainly the two-hour, made-for-America reduction, experienced Tuesday at the Arboretum, proved as audience-friendly as possible.

It also proved to be largely a one-man show, and a verbal one at that. This was primarily a storyteller’s tour de force, albeit elegantly illustrated and gorgeously accompanied.

Radyo Harsono, the dalang or puppeteer, is clearly a master of his art, speaking with ritual poise as well as in a multitude of character voices, singing and chanting as well as rapping out sound effects and signals to the gamelan, all while manipulating his large stock of leather, rod-mounted puppets.

As he told it, the story seemed one related from personal witness rather than musty myth. In this version, it consisted basically of a series of sly dialogue confrontations, usually followed by physical battle.

All of this was relatively easy to follow. The good guys are all little, hunchbacked figures with long slender noses and arms, and the villains are all big, hunchbacked figures with thick arms and snouts. The comic servants take animal shapes, and when they were talking Harsono would throw in all manner of contemporary allusions, extending the bantering in the quasi-intermission interlude to include himself and the musicians.

One or two of the eminent and awesomely accomplished musicians of the Gamelan Kyai Madukusuma/Madumurti were almost always busy underlining mood and pacing, but their glory lay in the frequent short passages for the full orchestra. Surely the most handsome-sounding of gamelans, at once earthy and ethereal, Kyai Madukusuma/Madumurti made a balanced, effortless magic with the clarity and cohesion of the best chamber music.