A Franklin LaVoie puppet in "Gilgamesh."

GILGAMESH

The New Phoenix Theatre has become a home for innovative ventures in theater. Their current offering takes one of the world’s oldest stories, the Gilgamesh epic, and retells it with the fabulous puppets of Franklin LaVoie.

Gilgamesh is a story of enduring friendship. Emotionally bound to his friend, Enkidu, Gilgamesh, shepherd-king of Uruk, feels invincible. When he loses Enkidu he feels entirely lost and goes on a quest for eternal life.

Robert Waterhouse has directed the production, built around a script by Gina Lachancz. Compelling music by composer/musicians Paul Kozlowski and Patrick Cain is integral to the event.

The experience is very beautiful, if somewhat unbalanced in favor of eye-popping visuals and arresting music over story-telling. LaVoie’s puppets are stunning, and he uses various tricks of the medium very effectively, particularly miniatures and shadows of his characters to heighten our sense of place and journey.

MUSICAL OF MUSICALS

The current send-up of Broadway musicals at O’Connell and Company is sure to delight any fan of the genre. The story of the ingénue who can’t pay the rent but is rescued by her hero is told and retold in the styles of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Jerry Herman and Andrew Lloyd Webber. A different choreographer has been enlisted for each vignette.

The material (music and book by Eric Rockwell; lyrics and book by Joanne Bogart) is clever and irreverent. The best section is the first, which successfully distills the well-worn Rodgers and Hammerstein formula: the “I don’t love you” song; the anthem to perseverance; the patriarchal song of resolve; and so forth. Performers Pamela Rose Mangus, Jenn Stafford, Guy Tomassi and Michael Tosha approach the material with game enthusiasm, with Miss Stafford providing an especially solid performance throughout the evening—her every line interpretation and gesture lands with perfection. Mangus scores especially well on a Marlene/Lenya number in the Kander and Ebb sequence.

Witty costuming by Todd Warfield provides comic echoes of Broadway’s past. Choreographic brilliance is achieved with ingenious parodies of Agnes DeMille’s work in Oklahoma by Bobby Cooke and in Terri George’s Gower Champion pastiche, done for the Jerry Herman section.

Roger Paolini’s direction is good-natured and loving. Theresa Quinn provides able musical direction. The production continues through May 20.