'Saragossa' dreams fascinate, then begin to weary us

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The first thing you notice as you enter Lookingglass Theatre for its world premiere production of “Manuscript From Saragossa” is just how adaptable the company's Water Tower Water Works space is, and how its set designers (in this case, Scott C. Neale, a recent Northwestern University grad) never fail to find an ingenious and thrilling way to frame the story at hand.

In this case, the audience is seated on two sides of a curling wooden ramp that suggests both the rugged Sierra Morena mountain range of Spain, where much of the play is set (and whose caves serve as home to a band of gypsies), and the deck of a ship lost at sea. A heavy wooden door is perched at the uplifted corner of one side of this ramp; a narrow staircase leading to the tiny writing desk of an obsessed and desperate man is at the other end.

Hanging in the balance in this production — which employs the same kind of mazelike, tale-within-a-tale storytelling found in such previous Lookingglass productions as “The Secret in the Wings” and “The Arabian Nights” — is a tangled web of dark adventure, erotic mysticism, social commentary and religious philosophy. At times, it is mesmerizing. But as one of the characters near the end of the show puts it (earning a big laugh from the audience, and a knowing wink from the cast), all these adventures and trials and conspiracies of consciousness drag on a good deal too long. The “travels” of its characters, whether psychic or real, are periodically fascinating, but also grow wearisome.

The show, adapted and inventively directed by Lookingglass actress Christine Mary Dunford, is based on Ian Maclean's translation of a fabled 19th century novel by Jan Potocki. A wealthy Polish aristocrat, Potocki's own life — as exotic traveler, ethnologist, linguist and possible member of the inner circle of secret societies and radical politics during the French Revolution — no doubt fueled the quasi-hallucinatory content of his book.

At the center of “Saragossa” is Alphonse von Worden (the fleet and tireless Lawrence E. DiStasi), a young and rather arrogantly snobby Walloon officer who is sidetracked while heading to join his regiment in Madrid in 1739. Alphonse later will chronicle his spiral into despair and madness in a vast manuscript that he bequeathes to his soulmate, Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew (mysterious and wonderfully cranky, and deftly played by Eva Barr). The story is told as he is on the brink of committing suicide.

So what happened to Alphonse, the good Christian and upholder of the principles of honor and self-preservation? He fell into the hands of a gypsy band known as the Gomelez family — led by Zoto the Bandit (a tragicomic turn by David Catlin), a self-elected gypsy actually of noble birth but who was warped by the rejection of his mother (the ghostly Tracy Walsh), a beautiful but physically and psychically scarred woman.

While held captive in the mountains Alphonse was, like many of the other characters here, tested, tortured and tormented. He is seduced by ravishing Muslim twins (Louise Lamson and Angela Walsh, who more than live up to their description as they cavort on red silk ropes). He is repeatedly haunted by the appearance of dangling men apparently murdered as part of the Spanish Inquisition. He is confronted with demands for his confession by the wily religious Hermit (a neatly duplicitous Craig Spidle). He is betrayed and cajoled by his serving man and “demon” (the wonderfully agile and sardonic Anthony Fleming III). He falls in love with Rebecca, the Cabbalist (a nicely ambiguous Tara Franklin). And he comes under the spell of gypsy music (Matt Sax strums the tune).

Dunford and her actors have had the good sense to inject the show with a wry sense of self-mocking humor. But even this can't entirely mitigate the travel exhaustion that eventually sets in during this black fantasia that poses some intriguing questions about faith, identity and that powerful elixir, self-delusion.