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Concluding Artistic Director Robert Falls’ 20th anniversary season at Goodman Theatre is Mirror of the Invisible World, adapted and directed by Manilow Resident Director Mary Zimmerman from the core of the 12th century Persian epic, the Haft Paykar. At the heart of this epic are seven romantic, adventurous and funny stories about seven princesses from China (Lisa Tejero), Greece (Atley S. Loughridge), Turkey (Stacey Yen), Africa (Charlette Speigner), India (Anjali Bhimani), Persia (Nicole Shalhoub) and Russia (Sofia Jean Gomez). Over the course of seven nights, King Bahram (Faran Tahir) weds each princess and listens as they impart a legend about love. First produced 10 years ago in the Goodman’s Studio Series, Zimmerman and her original design team reimagine this story for the Albert Theatre, with a new set and the addition of live music; Bhimani, Tahir and Tejero reprise their original roles. Mirror of the Invisible World runs June 23 – July 29.
“Mirror of the Invisible World is an inter-cultural conversation—a profoundly universal experience of the nature of romance, the many facets of beauty and the incredible grace of the Middle East,” said Goodman Theatre Artistic Director Robert Falls. “I can think of no better capstone for our season of exploration than this wondrous journey into a world that is ancient and removed from our own—but whose wisdom and beauty transcends the centuries with wit, clarity and uncommon brilliance.”
When it was first produced at the Goodman in 1997, Mirror of the Invisible World was hailed “Zimmerman at her imaginative best” (USA Today), “A beautifully understated Kama Sutra that transcends sexuality” (Chicago Sun-Times) and “A perfect fusion of ingenious stage pictures, diaphanous lighting, supple music and warmly wise tale-spinning” (Chicago Tribune). The Tony Award-winning director has adapted a 12th century work largely unknown to contemporary audiences—the Haft Paykar by poet Nizami of Ganja—about the life and adventures of legendary Persian King Bahram Gur. Mirror of the Invisible World dramatizes a section of the poem in which the king falls in love with the portraits of seven princesses from seven different countries, and then marries and builds each one a pavilion of a different color, representing a different planet or clime of the universe. Bahram visits one princess each night, and he listens as they spin mystical stories that teach him the meaning of patience, compassion, honesty, goodness and love.
“For all the trappings of exoticism that this poetic, loving text has—princesses from different lands and appearances of angels, riddles, disguise and adventure—there is a deep familiarity to what happens to the people of the stories,” said Zimmerman. “Hostile political rhetoric emphasizes difference and otherness, but masterful works of art speak to what is common in all human experience, allowing us to see ourselves in others.”
Zimmerman’s original design team now reconceives this work for the larger stage in the Albert Theatre with enhanced production elements to improve sight and sound, including a new set by Set Designer Daniel Ostling. The detailed new design sets the play in a palace chamber of the King which Ostling describes as “a more representational setting that will morph and give way to the other worlds and poetry of the story (while keeping) the tension between the show proscenium and the unexpected world that lives upstage of it.”
Sound Designer and Composer Michael Bodeen has added three Chicago musicians to evoke the native land of each princess. Using a variety of traditional and non-traditional instruments—dulcimer, oud (Middle Eastern lute), percussive drums, finger cymbals, tambourines and a gadoulka (Slavonic stringed instrument) among others, the self-described “sound alchemists” Ronnie Malley, Eve Monzingo and Gary Kalar come together from two different Chicago world music groups, Lamajamal and Mucca Pazza—a 28-piece circus punk marching band.
Tickets to Mirror of the Invisible World are $20 to $68 and may be purchased online at GoodmanTheatre.org, at the Goodman Theatre Box Office, 170 North Dearborn Street, or charged by phoning 312.443.3800.