Arts in Chicago - "Silk" at the Goodman Theatre

The Chinese believe that when two people are fated to love one another, there is a red string that pulls them together in life; in this story it is a silk thread that brings two people together across vast distances and foreign cultures. The Goodman Theater stages "Silk" adapted and directed by the award-winning Mary Zimmerman from the novel by Allesandro Baricco. Here we follow the story of Hervé Joncour, played by Ryan Artzberger, a silkworm egg merchant in the late 19th century who -due to a disease affecting the silkworm eggs- is forced to travel all the way to Japan to purchase silkworm eggs free of the disease. While there he meets an exotic woman, though no words would ever pass directly between the two, they share an intimacy that is beyond words. What they do not know frees them from the constraints of preconception to experience a love as pure as the silk that brought them together. We watch the performers almost like a man looking in from outside a window, as voyeurs in the life of Hervé. The Narrator, played by Christopher Donahue, is fantastic at weaving the threads of this story together, acting both as omniscient observer and occasional participant. Zimmerman creates a sense of epic scope through simple yet remarkably effective techniques such as rotation of a walking stick in a full circle whilst the Narrator walks alongside Hervé to represent the enormous distances being traveled. Set designer, Scott Bradley, deserves recognition for creating a dynamic set that represents the town of Lavilledieu in France and when lifted transforms into the mountaintop village of Shirakawa in Japan. The tragedy in this story lies in the notion that only in that which we cannot understand can we ever really experience what truly is. Seeking to unlearn and free ourselves from our selves we can truly live yet our self inevitably traps us in ourselves. Runs beginning 23-Apr, 2005. Highly recommended. 4.5 Stars ****1/2.