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Take One Swanwhite at the Transparent Theater, Sat/22 By Erica Pedersen It is opening night and the anticipation is tangible at Transparent Theater's inaugural performance of Swanwhite. The 100-year-old Swedish play has never been performed outside of Europe nor delivered in English. For the first time, the cast is culturally and ethnically diverse. It is an adaptation, a modern venture, just as the play itself is an experiment with love and lust and delusion. The patrons, expectant, linger around the refreshment booth and in the small lobby, drinking donated wine, flipping through the program, waiting for curtain call. A defining theme for the Transparent Theater is transformation; its driving mission is to awaken an awareness of humanity's moral equality through the arts. The theater, now an intimate, engaging, fully-functioning playhouse, was itself once a church. The wooden pews, terraced in Greek tradition, are the only remaining vestige of the space's religious heritage. While the seating is cozy, the stage is large and fills the vision. Only a table, chest, and blue satin bed sparingly grace the stage. The pews are quickly filled and with a start the play begins. The stepmother, spitting evil, cracks the infamous whip at her small and beautiful Duchess step-daughter, refusing her water in which to bathe her dirty feet. But soon the promise of love enters in the form of a prince bearing violets for the soul. Prince and Duchess become quick lovers who revel, like children, in love's bliss and unencumbered happiness, not asking why they love, only grateful they do. While romantic, the play is far from flippant. With dark, unexpected turns, the play questions and challenges the illusion of both perfection and dysfunction. But the performance fluctuated -- occassionally weak and transparent, the actor's ruse is broken, and at other times, the act is immaculate. The duchess, played by Kim Jiang, retains a youthful brilliance even in darkness, but often her highs seem frail and her lows feel forced; Jorge Rubio's prince is charismatic, his smooth, timbered voice reverberating easily through the theatre; Algin Ford's Duke is palpable without being complex. Sheri Clyde's Stepmother is sharp, volatile, and emotionally complicated; the handmaid, played by Anna Moore, is subversive but innocent, easily conveying a rich vulnerability; the King is a treat, looming and very present, he is at once dangerous, dark, and comedic, and summons a reaction from the otherwise mute audience. Sitting in the audience, the play's translator, Jacob Christfort, took an opportunity during intermission to explain to those seated around him how difficult this play is to deliver. Maybe it wasn't so much an explanation as a disclaimer. The piece is riddled with clichés: the embittered stepmother, the dreaded tower, the whimsical princess, the love-starved maid, the passion-red roses. With respect for the difficulty of translating a Swedish folktale drama ripe with cultural nuance, the lines are poetic but often awkward when exchanged. While the piece lacks conviction and full-throttled force in its delivery, like a fairy tale it lingers in retrospect. Visually, the play houses several levels of meaning, levels of understanding love and pain, that unravel long after the lights flicker and the theater empties, leaving the audience transformed for having wondered. [ East Bay | Metroactive | Archives ]