STAGE REVIEW / L.A. FESTIVAL : ‘Ester’ More Fun Than a 3-Ring <i> Circo</i>

Chile lies in the continent to the south and shares the Pacific with us, but how much do we know about its theater? Not enough. We can be grateful to the L.A. Festival (once again) for inviting El Gran Circo Teatro de Chile to the Santa Monica Pier to open our eyes and ears.

Gran Circo is neither all that gran nor all that circo, but perfectly named because what it offers is invested with a spiritual grandeur and the ragtag raffishness of circus down to the clownish make-up and loopy sense of exaggeration.

It has its own identity--something you could almost call a new form of teatro if it were not so fundamentally rooted in one of the oldest: commedia dell’arte. It is what director Andres Perez has made of combining poetry, music and street theater with silent movie and animated cartoon techniques. And it does not come as a surprise but as a confirmation to discover he spent time in 1988 in Paris working at Ariane Mnouchkine’s Theatre du Soleil--around which had revolved our 1984 Olympic Arts Festival.

“La Negra Ester,” created in 1988, is Perez’s stage version of Robert Parra’s epic poem about the hapless love of the poet/musician Roberto (a striking Boris Quercia) for a black prostitute named Ester (Rosa Ramirez). She works for the local madam, Dona Berta (Pachi Torreblanca) in the port of San Antonio.

Although the poem is written entirely in rhymed couplets and spoken in a chewy Chilean street Spanish, the heightened emphasis of sound effects, music, wildly exaggerated make-up and body language make it easy to follow.

The music is integral. Composed and/or adapted by the inventive musicians (Guillermo Aste, Alvaro Henriquez, Jorge Lobos), it provides a spine that supports and often interweaves with the text.

As simple as it all sounds (the English synopsis in the program is a guide, though it does little justice to the beauty of the text), the poem offers a complex layering of emotions and a vivid panoply of characters. Each of the prostitutes at Dona Berta’s is an individual, most memorable among them the blind Margarita (Maria Izquierda), the unspoiled Maria (Maria Jose Nunez) and the ungainly Esperanza, played with uncampy fondness by Guillermo Semler, reminiscent of no one so much as John Lithgow in “The World According to Garp.”

The piece is full of such reverberations. A clutching embrace between Ester and and an amorous sailor (Horacio Videla,) recalls the Scarlett and Rhett silhouette against the burning sky of Atlanta. Quercia is a quintessential Chaplin--a splendid mime who sometimes “takes out” his heart and talks to it, a look-alike who does nothing to exploit this, but brings to his thwarted love the Everyman quality of the Little Tramp. In the end, something of the indelible anguish, too, of the closing image of “City Lights.”

Other images are less fortunate. Aldo Parodi, who plays many parts well, does a stereotypically mincing Chinese in yellowface, and Videla returns as a minstrel show El Negro in blackface, a tall Al Jolson. Different cultures, different insensibilities, although such stereotyping is also very much a part of the cartooning edge of commedia.

These must not detract from the enormous achievement of “La Negra Ester.” It is no accident that this company of actors--like Theatre du Soleil--have been together a long time. Their interaction shows it. A pas de deux between Quercia and Ramirez with no more of a prop than a piece of cloth is one of the most eloquent fully clothed love scenes in memory. Her donning of his coat and his wearing of her shawl as she walks off stage with his tired frame resting on her shoulders is a powerful and complete expression of union. Although it is set in a bordello (one could read political meanings in that), “La Negra Ester” is a love story--several love stories--in all of its permutations.

El Gran Circo Teatro is also more proof that money is not what theater’s about. Daniel Palma’s and Francisco Sandoval’s set is a loose construct of bits of scrap lumber through which, in this idyllic setting, you can see the distant lights of the Santa Monica shoreline. A ladder straddles it, looking more like an improvised diving board. And a tower of wood scraps and broken furniture at stage left serves as Dona Berta’s boudoir.

It couldn’t be simpler. Or larger than life. Or more big-hearted. Or funnier. Or more unforgettable. What elements of soap opera are indicated in the synopsis don’t exist in the show. This is a kind of earthy Chilean “West Side Story” minus gangs, and equally moving.

Whatever you do, try not to miss “La Negra Ester.” The good news: there were seats still available at press time for tonight’s performance. The bad news: tonight is the third and final performance.

For those who can’t make it--and those who can--El Gran Circo will perform a different program Saturday and Sunday, same time, same place, on the history of Chile 1969-73, during the socialist rule of Salvador Allende. A way must be found to extend the run or bring this amazing company back.

Tonight, 7 p.m., at the tip of the Santa Monica Pier. Seating is backless bleachers. $10; (213) 623-7400 or 480-3232.