Uneven ‘Woman’ Delivers Haunting Chamber Musical

More requiem than fantasia, “The Woman Who Forgot Her Sweater” at the John Anson Ford’s inside space is a fairy tale that has lost its way, much like its forgetful female protagonist.

Elaborate production elements aside, composer O-Lan Jones and librettist Kathleen Cramer deliver an elegiac chamber musical that is simple to the point of starkness. A woman (Gretchen Johnson) rushes to her dying mother’s bedside but arrives too late to say her final farewells. She is then led by a mysterious Overseer (Keith Jefferson) to an eerie nether world populated by lionesses-goddesses, where she must undergo a series of trials. Meanwhile, up on the earthly plane, her husband (Richard Miro) and her sister Claire (Julie Christensen) revive their old romance. But their dalliance is rudely interrupted by news of the woman’s grim fate.

The stage has been carefully set for magic, but although Jones’ music is fittingly haunting, Cramer’s libretto is somewhat funereal. Certainly, fairy tales can be doleful and, well, Grimm. However, Cramer’s bold but over-cerebral parable is long on semiotics and short on plot. When the woman refuses to dance with the lionesses, the “queens of the compelling powers,” she is destroyed. For her, domesticity equals death. Cramer commendably inverts the female archetypes of folk tradition, but her meandering postmodern allegory never quite realizes its feminist pretensions.

Fortunately, Roxanne Rogers’ marvelously inventive staging and superb design elements compensate for the story’s shortfall of magic. Ably abetted by choreographer Gina Angelique, Rogers has assembled a gifted cast, strong singers all. Rogers embraces the meditative rhythms of the piece yet manages to infuse it with a necessary vitality that saves it from becoming too dirge-like.

The setting is an enchanted arena, a treat for the eyes and the senses. Snezana Petrovic’s freakishly foreboding set is a modernistic thicket of dangling metal, an arresting combination of horizontal and vertical layers that looks almost like a page of sheet music in three dimensions. Lun*na Menoh’s bizarre costumes have the same kind of visionary weirdness. In contrast, Robert Fromer’s genuinely spooky lighting could have been lifted directly from a B-grade horror movie.

Musical director John Ballinger conducts the small but virtuosic ensemble that provides live accompaniment. Particular praise should be heaped on Bart Hopkin, who created many of the experimental instruments for this show. When the actors strike the hanging chrome set-pieces like gigantic wind chimes, and a lioness’ claws are played like flutes, we sense we are in the vicinity of genius.

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* “The Woman Who Forgot Her Sweater,” John Anson Ford Theatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood Hills. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends April 22. (No performance April 15.) $15-$20. (323) 461-3673. Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes.