Theatre Review: Artful puppetry of Ox-Herder's Tale lost in translation

“No one can say who heard it first, it just happened.” This is how The Ox-Herder's Tale begins, as five khaki-clad narrators, looking something like modern-day archaeologists, dig up the mythical tale of a down-on-his-luck magician who finds the path to enlightenment by trying to stage an unthinkable trick. Playing at the Museum of Contemporary Art through Nov. 30, the production is the culmination of two-and-a-half years of work by Chicago-based performance group Blair Thomas & Company, founded in 2002 to support the creative efforts of Thomas, local puppeteer and founder of Chicago's Redmoon Theatre.

Thomas has garnered numerous accolades-- including a claim as the first person to hold the distinguished Jim Henson Artist-In-Residence position at the University Of Maryland-- which were on display in this inventive production, which combined live percussion from the talented Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake, larger-than-life puppetry and complex stilt choreography.

From a visual and auditory perspective, the show was breathtaking, proving that puppetry can be more than just child’s play as sophisticated compositions of music, light, sound, and dance merged into a dazzling spectacle. However, while these crucial elements were fulfilling, the overarching story and delivery of the narration often deflated the experience.

Based on an ancient Zen-Buddhist fable that was likely inspired by Thomas’ studies in a Chicago Buddhist temple, the third-person tale tells of a failed magician who saws himself in half and decides to put himself back together again when he comes up with a trick to save his career, pulling a bull out of his hat by the ring of its nose. The search for the magical beast and the meaning of the magician’s own existence becomes the heart of the tale. But it gets lost in translation: In this staged iteration, the tale is set in the West and its five uninspired narrators fall victim to the snares of too much telling, not enough showing.

In the rare moments when puppets and the music ruled the show, the absence of words was golden. No better was this shown than in the climax scene when the magician finally meets the bull, a larger-than-life figure that hauntingly paraded across the stage on stilts. As the beats of the music became heavier, the lights lower and the puppets' dancing quickened, it became clear that the true depth of Thomas’ vision lurked in the shadows left on stage by puppets who anxiously waited, like the audience, for a headlining moment.

Before the show closed with an extended drum circle, surrounded in a meditative red light, the narrators left us with one last koan to ponder: “Forgetting oneself is the goal for magicians, so the audience can see the trick itself.” If only they would take their own advice.

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