The King Stag - Carlo Gozzi

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Five Tales for the Theatre (includes The King Stag)
(1989), Carlo Gozzi, Albert Bermel, editor

    What you see is what you get in The King Stag. Carlo Gozzi’s 18^th Century fairy tale, presently touring in a lavish production designed by Julie Taymor of Lion King fame and directed by Andrei Serban, is a rather silly piece of froth. It is a perfect show for children. Replete with thwarted lovers, magical transformations, sneaky skullduggery and corny jokes, adults might not watch it at all if it wasn’t for Taymor’s transcendent costumes, movement and background art.
    As things stand, as with The Lion King, a much later piece in Taymor’s oeuvre, you can’t take your eyes off the stage. Combining the conventions of the commedia dell’arte from the streets of Renaissance Italy with Japanese bunraku and Indonesian shadow puppetry, Taymor has created a spectacle in which bears and birds float like kites, shadows come to animated life, an enormous talking head winks, laughs, frowns and indicates approval of applicants for the king’s hand in marriage. It’s a theatrical miracle.
    The story, enacted in exaggerated commedia style by stalwarts of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, American Repertory Theater which originally commissioned the piece some 18 years ago, is a stock fable of love and redemption. In the City of Serendippo, the king seeks a wife. After interviewing 2,750 candidates, he settles on the lovely Angela, apparently the only honest one in the bunch. She loves him for himself, not his lofty position. His decision leaves a bunch of disgruntled losers, not the least of whom is the evil Prime Minister, Tartaglia, who wanted the king for his own daughter and Angela for himself. On a wedding celebration hunting trip to the Forest of Miracoli, Tartaglia plots to kill the king. But, by means of a secret magical spell, the royal spirit passes into the body of a stag and, from there, into an emaciated ancient peasant (played by a wooden puppet). It is Angela’s task to recognize her true love in this repulsive guise and she is equal to the task. A powerful magician, original creator of the transmigration spell, enters as deus ex machina; evil is exposed, virtue rewarded and the 90-minute spectacle reaches an end.
    But not before we get a few subplots, a bunch of pratfalls, even a priest and rabbi joke. Although the plot is archaic and the costumes fantastic, the dialogue is pretty contemporary, making for an interesting mix. (“Where did you learn to drive?” one character challenges another who is speeding across the stage. “Berkeley?”) The actors are excellent, given the context, which calls for exaggeration and melodramatic gesture. Movement, also choreographed by the multi-talented Taymor, ranges from the posturing of Balinese temple dancers to the somersaults and prancing of commedia. It is as though Taymor and Serban have thrown every element of theater (including a small pinch of realism) into an enormous stewpot and stirred. The resulting dish may not be totally satisfying but it's so delicious it whets the appetite for more.