New York Theater Preview: THE BLUE DRAGON (BAM)

A DRAGON IN BROOKLYN

A true auteur and renaissance man of the theater, Robert Lepage returns with his troupe Ex Machina to The Brooklyn Academy of Music for its 2013 Next Wave Festival, this time with his staging of The Blue Dragon, a not-to-be-missed show with a limited four-day run September 18-21. Mr. Lepage also stars, making this his first appearance on the BAM stage in eleven years. With tickets priced less than it would cost to see a movie with popcorn and soda, attendance is mandatory for lovers of theater â€“ especially theater as multi-layered visual spectacle â€“ who want to retain a clear conscience. In addition, for the extra curious, Mr. Lepage will appear on Iconic Artist Talk, moderated by Don Shewey, at the BAM Fisher (Hillman Studio, 321 Ashland Pl) on September 21 at 4:30pm.

The play, which Mr. Lepage co-authored with longtime collaborator Marie Michaud, is not so much a sequel as a â€œspinoffâ€ (as Mr. Lepage puts it) of his five-and-a-half-hour The Dragon’s Trilogy, which premiered in 1985 when its creator was only twenty-seven, and instantly made him a name in the world theater community. Although The Blue Dragon picks up twenty years after Trilogy leaves off, the new play stands autonomous and one need know nothing of its ancestor to experience it fully. In it, Mr. Lepage plays Pierre Lamontagne, a French-Canadian art gallery owner in Shanghai, who is visited by Claire (Ms. Michaud), an ex who has come to China to adopt a child. Unexpectedly, Claire forms a bond with Pierre’s current lover, a young artist named Xiao Ling (played by Tai Wei Foo, who is also the show’s choreographer), who happens to be pregnant with Pierre’s baby.

The English-language version of The Blue Dragon premiered in Los Angeles more or less as a work in progress in 2008, and rave reviews have followed it from one continent to the next, with Michael Billington of The Guardian writing that â€œit offers an ideal marriage of form and content,â€ an observation which echoed those of numerous critics. This is no small compliment when taking into account the fantastic and extravagant forms that Mr. Lepage’s inventions take: The Cirque du Soleil shows KÃ and Totem are both his creations. Those two are perhaps extreme examples, but they illustrate Mr. Lepage’s range and powers. In the case of The Blue Dragon, these powers work to tell a valuable, emotional, human story. And whereas some of his past creations have been criticized for letting the imagery overwhelm the drama, for this play the critical consensus seems to be that he’s remedied that issue. Here the visuals are meant to bring the audience viscerally into the characters’ world as envisioned by Mr. Lepage: calligraphy flows from a performer’s hand, snow falls, bicycles roll through Shanghai at night, the city itself seems to morph, curtains slide, images are projected, and settings change from gallery to train station, to apartment, to restaurant, airport and other locations â€“ all of these shape-shifting one into another on Michel Gauthier’s two-level set with the grace and fluidity of a magic trick performed by a master.

Mr. Lepage’s resumÃ© is impressive by any standards. In the twenty-eight years since his breakout play he has put on numerous shows of his own authorship, which includ Vinci, Polygraph, and Tectonic Plates, just to name a few; he’s staged Shakespeare and was the first person from North America to do so at the Royal National Theater; he’s directed operas, including the Ring cycle for the Met; and founded the production company Ex Machina, for which he served as creative director.

But what is perhaps most fascinating about Mr. Lepage is to what extent he is truly the author, in the broadest sense of the word, of all his works. There are a number of good directors out there and some that are outstanding, but few can claim to be as versatile, multifaceted and as hands-on in the creations of their shows as he is. Besides being a playwright and theater director, Mr. Lepage is also a scenic artist, an actor, and a filmmaker, and one gets the sense that if he wanted to he could pull off a show singlehanded â€“ provided he could find a way to act and operate the lighting and effects all at the same time. This kind of mastery and singularity of vision hardly precludes collaboration; on the contrary, it focuses and concentrates the collaborators’ efforts, only enhancing the results. In the end what one is left with is an unadulterated unique personal artistic vision, which is about the only thing that has a shot at being real art. And for four days in September we have the chance to experience it. I wouldn’t miss it.