Back and forth in a dream world

Stephin Merritt

“Showtunes” (Nonesuch)

* * * 1/2

TO summarize: Hans Christian Andersen was a 13th century Chinese emperor who was resurrected in a Ming Dynasty opera 400 years later. No, wait. That’s not it. But it’s easy to lose track on this album of songs from three stage productions all jumbled together. And why not? Each of Merritt’s three collaborations with director Chen Shi-Zheng -- the dark comedy “The Orphan of Zhao,” the loose adaptation of the Chinese opera “Peach Blossom Fan” and the Andersen-derived “My Life as a Fantasy” -- inhabits a dream world, so jumping back and forth among them on the album only enhances that quality.

The incongruities don’t stop there, though. The lyrics (voiced by original cast members, but not by the droll Merritt himself) take surreal twists away from the time/place settings of the stories. The music ranges as far as stylized Latin and Hawaiian, with wit and sophistication alluding at least vaguely to Gilbert & Sullivan, Weill and Sondheim.

Merritt’s past work has included such Magnetic Fields song-cycles as “69 Love Songs” and last year’s “i,” but this suggests that a full focus on inventive musical theater may be where his talents will flourish.

-- Steve Hochman