Greenan packs imperiousness into the Emperor (clad in regal red and black silk by costume designer William Pucilowsky) Maxwell is a buoyant aerialist and dragon animator and Rosenblum supplies comedy as an incompetent art student. First seen striding wearily over the Chinese countryside - while gracefully staying in place on the stage - Connors’s Orphan is an expressive and appealing heroine. (Was a phoenix feather an ingredient in the paintbrush? I wasn’t sure.) But the story is generally clear enough. Occasionally, the cast’s miming leaves a narrative detail vague for a moment. A Chinese-style water sleeve dance, choreographed by Irina Tsikurishvili and performed by members of the ensemble, is atmospheric but a tad wobbly in the execution. The highlights of the hour-long play are the set pieces, including the dragon parade, the aerial silks routine (choreographed by Meg Maxwell and performed by Maxwell and Joshua Rosenblum), and the gorgeously eerie cameo by the phoenix (a multi-part puppet, designed by Amy Kaplan). A battle of wits with a covetous Emperor (Greenan) ensues. After the Orphan travels to the big city, where she is tossed out of an aristocratic art school by a snobbish teacher (Greenan), the Old Man reveals his Dumbledore dimension, appearing magically to give her an enchanted paintbrush, which can conjure objects and creatures into existence. Propelling the narrative is the Orphan (Kathryn Connors), a resourceful peasant girl and would-be artist who helps a frail Old Man (Michael Greenan) get a drink of water.
#Magic paintbrush chinese folktale plus
Employing Synetic Theater’s trademark wordless-storytelling technique - plus puppetry and the aforementioned artsy-circus-style aerial gymnastics - director and adaptor Elena Velasco and her cast riff on a Chinese folk tale, which argues for the value of kindness, enterprise and creative thinking. These are some of the striking images in “The Magic Paintbrush,” the pleasant and sometimes inspired children’s entertainment running through April 10 at Synetic Family Theater. Acrobats spin and somersault in the air, their limbs entwined in lengths of scarlet fabric. A silver dragon cavorts through a city festival. The large boat capsized and all the men were lost at sea.įrom that day on, Ma Liang and the people of his village lived happily… but not ever after.A flame-colored phoenix hovers over Ancient China. When they were en route to the mountain, Ma Liang painted a wicked storm. Ma Liang then painted a huge sailboat into which the rich man and his cronies got in to set sail. The rich man then demanded a large boat large enough to sail the ocean to collect his gold. So Ma Liang painted a mountain of gold, but he did so in the middle of a vast sea.
and Lo and Behold, the rich miser replied, “A mountain of gold!” (No surprises, there.)
He asked the rich man what he would like…. When Ma Liang arrived, the rich miser demanded that he draw for him or face punishment. Shen, a girl from a poor Chinese village, draws pictures in the sand when send by her. Frustrated and angry, the rich miser ordered his guards to capture Ma Liang and bring him over. Magic Paintbrush retells an old folk story and does it well indeed. But no matter how many pictures he drew, none of them actually came to life. The next morning, the rich man used the paintbrush to paint many pictures of all that his imagination desired. While Ma Liang was asleep, the servants stole his brush. One day, in the still darkness of the night, the miser sent his servants into Ma Liang’s home. Instead, he wanted to make himself even richer. In the same village, there lived a rich man who heard of Ma Liang and came to covet the magical brush.
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