Theater: Fables and Foibles (from Hovhannes Toumanyan's world)

by Aram Kouyoumdjian

Published: Wednesday October 15, 2008

Tigran Kirakosyan as a hungry wolf in “The Stupid Man”.

What happens when a theater takes a handful of traditional Armenian fables and dramatizes them with a modern, irreverent sensibility? If the fables are by Hovhannes Toumanyan and the staging is at Luna Playhouse, a delightful production emerges. To be sure, the pastiche billed as "From Toumanyan's World" is rather rough around the edges, but it is altogether astute (thanks to healthy doses of surreal humor) and brims with energy (thanks to a spirited cast). The novel show, which had a too-short run earlier this month, has fortunately added matinee performances (at 11:00 a.m.) on Sundays, October 26 and November 2.

Toumanyan, who composed his narrative poems and short stories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was among the writers who made Tiflis (the now-troubled Georgian capital, Tbilisi) a center of Armenian intellectual life at the time. Toumanyan's work is remarkably simple but never simplistic, especially when it serves as satire of human foibles. For instance, one of his masterworks, "A Drop of Honey," describes how an utterly benign incident leads to unbridled bloodshed. Although it is a comic composition, it doubles as allegory in its condemnation of senseless killing and war. (In Sojourn at Ararat, the poem takes on unexpected potency as the lead-in to a segment on the Genocide).

At Luna, director Aramazd Stepanian's eager cast acts out the poem as a choral piece, with Stepanian himself providing vigorous narration. The staging delivers laughs by punching up the poem's farcical elements while downplaying any tragic undercurrent. In this vein, it maintains a steady pace and tone, even though the ever-escalating conflict in the poem demands a corresponding build-up in the performance.

The comedy takes on an absurdist quality in "The Stupid Man," which recounts the titular character's journey to see God and express his grievances. When he finally reaches heaven, he encounters a God who bears a strange resemblance to the Godfather (thanks to Stepanian channeling Brando). God promises the stupid man good fortune and actually hands it to him on a flash drive. True to his name, however, the stupid man fails to realize the bounty he has been given and proceeds to meet an entirely unfortunate demise, ending up as a meal for a hungry wolf.

Tigran Kirakosyan gleefully devours his role as the wolf and goes on to exhibit superior talent as a funnyman in his portrayal of myriad characters, including Ousta Piso in "The Dog and the Cat." There, he puts on an impressive display of physicalized movement as he teams up with Ashot Tadevosian to perform Toumanyan's rhymes as rap rhythms. Tadevosian proves particularly adept at pulling off this inspired bit of bravura.

By the time the show gets to "The Death of Kikos," the hysterics are in full swing. In that story, a young woman sitting underneath a tree conceives the thought that Kikos, the son she imagines having in the future, will climb up the tree and fall to his death. In ridiculous fashion, she begins mourning the death of this nonexistent child, and is soon joined by her entire family (including her iPod-addicted sister) in planning his funeral. The piece is performed in fittingly exaggerated style, and when Lyudmila Grigoryan, grandmother to the "dead" Kikos, begins wailing, the lunacy turns downright sidesplitting.

Props go to a cast that tackles the show's challenges with gusto. While several members of the ensemble are obviously inexperienced, they acquit themselves by reveling in the material. A few of the vignettes themselves would benefit from some tweaking, including "Paregentanuh," which falls relatively flat, as do the stories that are simply read (sans staging) at the outset of each act. Overall, however, "From Toumanyan's World" enlivens our literary tradition in a way that is essential to its survival.

Ensuring that survival will be the appreciable number of children – the most honest of critics – who were in the audience for this family-friendly show the night I saw it. They were neither fidgety nor restless. They sat, smiling and rapt, relishing Toumanyan's magical words within a context to which they could relate.