The talents tempt, but their Eden is uneven

Partners on and off the stage, dancer-choreographer Josie Walsh and rock guitarist-songwriter Paul Rivera have created a contemporary music theater boasting tremendous energy and imagination. They call Walsh’s company Myo and Rivera’s band Kyo.

In reviving and revising their two-act “Garden of Reason” -- at the Ivar Theatre in Hollywood through June 11 -- they again ask aerialist Ingrid Hoffman to expand the work’s movement design high above the stage floor. And guest singer Maude Maggart not only alternates with Rivera as lead vocalist but also shares the central role of Eve (yes, the biblical Eve) with Walsh.

These talented artists and more than a dozen others are on a furious quest to entertain, but the Saturday performance found them undone by a sound system that left much of the singing in Act 1 a muffled drone -- and by lighting effects that left much of the dancing in the same act a murky blur.

A pity, since “Garden of Reason” needs clarity galore to deliver its rambling parable of how temptation has undone mankind ever since Eden and caused fatal splits between the needs of the body and the needs of the spirit.

Whether playing huge chimes at the left of the stage or singing lyrics about modern man’s falls from grace, the charismatic Rivera performs on stilts, looming over everyone else. Walsh and Maggart embody the eternal conflicts driving the piece (though Walsh’s role could be more focused in this regard), with the versatile Jackamo Harvey torn between them as Adam.

Act 2 finds these artists at their most expressive. Maggart sings poignantly. Hoffman writhes angrily in a suspended cargo net. Rivera connects emotionally with his words (a problem earlier), and Walsh joins Harvey for the only choreography in which her ballet technique proves more than an useless affectation.

Though they don’t always attractively fit their wearers, Kiyomi Hara’s costume designs supply their own cryptic insights on our society -- bar-coded women, for example, on sale and ready for checkout at any cash register.

When Myo and Kyo mass their forces -- and Hoffman’s crew adds acrobatic heightening -- “Garden of Reason” achieves overwhelming slash-and-burn intensity. The company is tireless, resourceful and alluring, and there’s no confusion in what it sets out to do.

But there’s a fatal flaw in the show’s DNA: Walsh’s choreography is inherently frenetic, visceral and assaultive, not “Garden of Reason” reasonable -- and, similarly, nothing in Bobby Tahouri’s music suggests a capacity for lyricism, stillness or inner peace.

So the yearning for a state of grace and spirituality that we keep hearing about is just empty words -- Myo/Kyo would never risk being slow or quiet or thoughtful or reverent enough to connect with it. Any true garden of reason would have to encompass the life of the mind -- something wholly off-limits here.

Walsh, Rivera and their collaborators effectively skewer our endless appetite for self-delusion, but their show also incessantly feeds that appetite by pretending that it cares about anything beyond immediate gratification. Biting the apple is not only its subject and final image but its game, and any deeper pretensions are just more bar-coded commodities, reduced for quick sale.