Vague Text, Lack of Emotion Trip Up ‘The Glass Case’

Dee Caspary IV is an up-and-coming 26-year-old choreographer who has been compared to Bob Fosse. Unfortunately, his “The Glass Case,” which opened a weekend run Friday at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, turns out to be little more than a music video alternating with a computer animation game.

The short two-act work, the first in a planned trilogy, recounts a story about intrigue in a royal family of a remote age and galaxy where the royals wear bizarre masks and the hunter-people wear as little as they can get away with. At least, I think that’s what it’s about: The theater’s speaker system (perhaps mercifully) muddled the vague, pretentious text, written by Caspary.

The title alludes to a glass box in which Jadan (Merrissa Gassel), the beloved of the hero, Prince Talimeen (Justin Giles) of the Village of Lindley, is imprisoned for mysterious reasons and from which she is finally released or rescued by Talimeen’s love.

Caspary is adept at forming and dissolving high-energy, drill-team groups, inventing asymmetrical, pump-action movement and working on and against the beat in a score compiled from music by Bjork, U2, Meshell Ndegeocello, Lamb, Rusted Root, Eric Amadio, and the soundtracks of “Spy Game” and “Minority Report.”

The choreography has no emotional weight whatsoever but gives the 15 dancers plenty of bite-sized opportunities to explode in action.

The choreographer also devises a mime language resembling computer-animation figures to accompany and act the voice-over narratives that advance the story. But what action can salvage such a prosaic line as Talimeen asking his father, King Algon (Brian Burt), why he has imprisoned Jadan: “Just explain the plan. Better yet, what is going on?”

The work ends with what’s meant to be a tantalizing teaser for the sequel: “The secret remains hidden.” Some of us won’t find it hard to resist.