“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is a quirky Arthurian romance penned in alliterative Middle English in the 14th-century by the anonymous Pearl Poet.  Because it is one of my favorite stories, of all the Planet Connections productions I was slated to see, my hopes were highest for this adaptation of the legend, The Green Knight, written by Brian Rady and directed by Jeremy Bloom.

The legend is about a knight who–you guessed it–is entirely green: armor, horse, skin, the works.  On Christmas Day, this verdant villain rides into King Arthur’s court to challenge one of his famous knights.  Sir Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, steps up to the challenge and embarks on a year-long journey, whose trials are infused with dark magic and temptation, to prove his chivalry and settle the score with the Green Knight.

The Green Knight sort of begins at the top of the stairs leading to 45 Bleecker’s downstairs theater, The Green Room.  The usher taking tickets at the door lapses suddenly into a brokenly scripted Arthurian diatribe before the audience is permitted to enter.  When we finally make our way down the stairwell to the theater this character breaks her soliloquy to inform us that the emergency exits lie beyond the narrow stairway by which we entered the dungeon.  For better or for worse, there is no getting out of this trial now.

As the audience settles into their seats, a gaggle of imbeciles dressed entirely in makeshift pink outfits is dancing off stage in the corner of the room to live drumming.  Audience members are offered complimentary cups of red wine, and soon, the twirling imbeciles, take their places on stage: King Arthur, Guinevere, Morgan le Fay, Sir Gawain, Sir Gawain’s horse, and members of court–the whole pink posse is there.

The imbeciles-turned-actors, as it turns out, are fantastic.  They at once mock the deliberately quirky and shoddy costumes and set design while completely enrapturing the audience in an Arthurian legend gone postmodern.  They meet the challenge of an updated, edgy and highly alliterative script and spin off these ceaselessly tongue-twisting lines with ease.

As the Green Knight interrupts the yuletide feast at King Arthur’s court, the scene succeeds in being at once engaging and funny.  We are rooting for this goofy Gawain, even as he rides off on his horse–piggy-backed on an actor wearing a horse head.  We watch as Sir Gawain becomes deterred on his journey to challenge the Green Knight at a debaucherous castle belonging to Lord and Lady Bertilak.  We watch the climactic scene, awash in green lighting, when Sir Gawain finally meets again the infamous Green Knight.  And the whole deliberately overacted and under-designed production comes together with aplomb to make a must-see whirl of wild wonderment and haughty hilarity.

The Green Knight was absolutely the most entertaining, hilarious, seamless performance I’ve seen in a long time.  My only criticism?  Lose the preface at the precipice.  We don’t need the usher’s diatribe as intro, and the language didn’t quite match the purply-pink parlance we’d be presented with during the bulk of the play; it merely felt like an unnecessary delay to seeing a play that would bring this legend to life, utterly delight us, and hardly be a dud.

Cast:

Scott Morse, Thomas Crawford, Veracity Butcher, Kareem Lucas, Amanda Bloom, Holly Chou, Laura Siszkin-Fernandez, Catherine LeFrere, Joel Sinensky, Joyce Miller, Brett Aresco

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If you’re looking for the sanitized, Disneyfied version of J.M.Barrie’s familiar tale of Peter Pan, then by all means, please click on over to Netflix right now and put it in your queue.  If, however, you’re looking to experience the story of Peter Pan and Wendy Darling in a way that explores themes of darkness, longing, fear, confusion, loss, revenge and bittersweet sadness then I suggest you head over to Peter ~ Wendy (an illuminating re-imagining of the timeless tale of Peter Pan) and watch as a cast of strangely sweet and sweetly strange characters re-tell the tale as you’ve never encountered before.

Peter and Wendy Jump

Conceived and directed by Jeremy Bloom, Peter ~ Wendy is a compilation of Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy and The Little White Bird and manages to poetically and creatively tell a story that we’ve all heard enough times to know it by heart.  Whereas much of the story is still childlike and innocent, Bloom washes parts of the piece with an undertone of modern horror ripped from the headlines – while it’s always been perfectly lovely to imagine a childishly smitten Peter Pan (Chris Hejl) waiting at Wendy’s (Heloise Darcq) window and then flying her away from her loving parents (Jesse Garrison as Mr. Darling and Sarah Ann Masse as Mrs. Darling), in the wake of stories such as Jaycee Lee Dugard and Elisabeth Smart it doesn’t seem as, well, Darling anymore.  Even the notion of the sweet little shack built just for Wendy upon her arrival to Neverland (known as a “Wendy House”) brings images of the strange shack Jaycee Lee Dugard was forced to live in for 18 years.  Maybe we’re not meant to make these parallels, but for just a moment the connection happens anyway.  Peeping Toms, or Pans, can sprinkle all the fairy dust they want, but there’s no doubt Peter is leading Wendy into danger, and this production tells a much more adult version of the story than any traditional adaptation.  Again, perhaps it’s because director Bloom is using unconventional images, methods, media and lighting to tell the tale; there’s something eerie about his Neverland and there’s something unsettling about Wendy’s life there.

Pirates and Faeries and Lost Boys, oh my

With a large cast of characters who take on the roles of Lost Boys, faeries, pirates, Indians, mermaids, and birds, there’s no end to the amount of imagery and activity that will keep you intrigued and fascinated; although there are definite moments of bombardment when characters talk over each other and everyone talks over a pre-recorded (somewhat unintelligible) prattling.  This is, of course, intentional and I’m sure only meant to cement the idea of confusion and strangeness which it does.

Particularly magical are some of the moments that need the greatest amount of imagination to execute – Wendy and Peter and Tinkerbell (Holly Chou) flying high above the streets of London as cast members narrate their journey, for instance, or the flurry of faeries building Wendy a house, please with themselves and adding on features in order to make the house appealing to Wendy.  With minimal stage design and more attention to sound and light design, what takes place in your head (planted by these actors) is as much a part of the production as what takes place in front of you.

Deadpanning her way through the role of Hook is Joyce Miller, flanked by her cronies Mr. Smee (Claire Neumann) and Noodler (Claire Wilmoth) and her tremendously straight-faced delivery brings about some of the funniest (and funnest) moments of the play.  Somewhere in the meeting of good dialogue, great delivery, and shadows of ideas that launch your imagination (Miller’s bent index finger provides the implication of the hook, and the 3 swaying constantly back and forth, back and forth echoes the listing of The Jolly Roger) is that sweet spot where true stagecraft becomes something more.  I’ve no problem admitting that the scenes which involved these three women were my favorite.

One directorial choice that can’t be overlooked is Jeremy Bloom’s decision to cast one of his title characters with a woman for whom English is obviously a second language.  Now, in New York’s great melting pot I’ve come across numerous performers of varied backgrounds; their heritage and ethnicity often lend to the rich texture of the story.  And certainly, in a production where traditional male roles such as pirates and even a Lost Boy usually played by males are cast regardless of gender, it’s refreshing to see boundaries ignored and lines blurred.  Ms. Darcq, however, as Wendy, does not just give her character a lilting foreign accent but rather can often be somewhat off the mark in her delivery which can mean whole passages of dialogue go misunderstood by the audience. Her odd emphasis is distracting enough to make one drop the suspension of disbelief and sit for a moment dissecting the delivery.  One could either view this as a deficit, or see this as a bold choice made by Bloom in order to strengthen the notion of Wendy as a stranger in a strange land.  What Ms. Darcq can sometimes lose with her delivery she by far makes up for with an expressive face that very clearly telegraphs the emotion of Wendy’s joy at seeing a magic unfold before her.  Therefore I won’t say this particular facet works or doesn’t; I’ll leave it up to the audience to decide for themselves.

Overall, this production of Peter~Wendy does much to tell a truer tale – almost like revisiting the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales and concluding that they weren’t so lovely as once believed.  With nontraditional choices, a good balance of sight, sound and even sensuality, and small touches like the Lost Boy’s eyes or Tinkerbell’s light source, you’ll come away from walkerspace with a bigger appreciation for this children’s tale than you had before.

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• It’s Totally Easy Being Green: The Green Knight (Planet Connections 2010)