Enchanting ‘Green Bird’ Leads to a Magical Kingdom

The title character in “The Green Bird” is a chartreuse, feathery creature that flies around, dispensing advice to the members of a royal family torn asunder by a wicked grandmother named Tartagliona. Eighteen years ago, Tartagliona fooled her son, the king, and ordered his royal twin babies to be killed and his queen to be buried alive. But neither of those horrible things happened, exactly. Now, it’s payback time.

Director and designer Julie Taymor brings a delirious and whimsical vision to every vivid detail in Carlo Gozzi’s 1765 fable, so chock-full of magical transformations that magic becomes the norm. “The Green Bird” is having its West Coast premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse.

Barbarina (Patricia Dunnock) and Renzo (Sebastian Roche) are the royal twins adopted at birth by a sausage seller (Ned Eisenberg) and his wife, Smeraldina (Jan Leslie Harding). The beautiful twins, who have somehow acquired British accents in a household overseen by people who sound like Archie and Edith Bunker, leave home in search of their roots. Along the way, they take the advice of a huge talking stone head. Later, Renzo goes in search of singing apples and finds them--20-foot high curvaceous bodies trailing apple-green gowns. Their apple-heads split open to reveal winsome ladies, and when the apple-ladies start singing in Italian, small bobbing apples suddenly appear above English supertitles, helping us follow along in the manner of a TV sing-along. The tone is slap-happy, the design quite beautiful.

Other transformations are simpler but just as wonderful. When the twins throw a pebble at a wall and are made instantly rich, five crystal chandeliers descend just as servants appear to tear papier-ma^che cloaks off the backs of the twins, revealing fine linen garments underneath (designed by Constance Hoffman). Most of the characters wear masks or half masks, which convey a hilarious amount of personality but allow the actors’ mouths to move freely, creating the illusion of a sumptuous children’s book come to life.

Taymor is an international theater and opera director known for employing eloquent puppets and masks she designs herself. Last season, she directed a critically reviled version of Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” at the Los Angeles Music Center Opera. Her “Green Bird,” which mixes opera, dance, funky music and burlesque into a deft but wacky brew, should firmly reestablish Taymor’s reputation on this coast.

Taymor delivers magic and delight, but her heart is in the visuals and not the execution of the story, which Gozzi wrote for the Italian commedia dell’arte as it was about to become irrelevant to a more realistic era. Every plot turn feels as if it were just picked out of a hat. In Gozzi’s play, the characters are allegorical--the Poet, the Philosopher, the King--in ways that are of little interest to Taymor, and thus the story seems to have no satisfying inner conclusions or cause and effect.

Of course, the major plot points are in working order: Good does eventually triumph over the evil. Tartagliona is justly banished, and her henchman, the Rasta soothsayer Brighella (the amusing Reg E. Cathey), whose den is an intoxicating magician’s lair with a backdrop of anatomical sketches and scientific jottings covering the entire wall (the sets are by Christine Jones).

Composer Elliot Goldenthal provides percolating accompaniment for Taymor’s enchanting visions--the pair’s artistic collaboration is very much in the intense manner of Philip Glass and JoAnne Akalaitis. Goldenthal’s score suggests what might happen if Glass were writing the “Funky Chicken,” or if Nino Rota had been asked to score “Pulp Fiction.”

Of the actors, all of whom stand out even under masks, Derek Smith as the king stands out the most. He is a neurotic and delicate monarch with an over-large head, who demands and refuses to be comforted by his clown Pantalone (Andrew Weems). He keeps bringing out tissues, which keep reminding him of his lost queen, who was once turned into a dove, and he’s forever trying to grab one of them before they fall off into the orchestra pit. It’s a lovely pantomime of grief, until the moment the king spots the gorgeous Barbarina, who of course he doesn’t recognize as his own daughter.

But, not to worry, incest is not on the menu. This is a merry kingdom, a magical kingdom, an antidote to everything real or awful. This is a midsummer night’s dream, a transformative night for all concerned.

* “The Green Bird,” La Jolla Playhouse, La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road. Tuesday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Aug. 25. $19-$36. (619) 550-1010. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

With: Reg. E. Cathey, Andrew Weems, Ned Eisenberg, Jan Leslie Harding, Patricia Dunnock, Sebastian Roche, Kristine Nielsen, Bruce Turk, Derek Smith, Priscilla Shanks, Lee Lewis, Sophia Salguero, Erico Villanueva, Amy Elizabeth McKenna, Mike Ryan, Stephen Kaplin.

Musicians: Bill Ruyle, Paul Sundfor, Chris Vitas.

The La Jolla Playhouse presents a Theatre for a New Audience production. By Carlo Gozzi. Translated by Albert Bermel and Ted Emery. Directed and co-designed by Julie Taymor. Original music by Elliot Goldenthal. Music director Richard Martinez. Sets Christine Jones. Costumes Constance Hoffman. Lights Donald Holder. Sound Bob Bielecki. Wigs and and makeup Steven W. Bryant. Mask and puppet design Julie Taymor. Production stage manager Michele Steckler.