Robert Lepage's "The Andersen Project'

The Andersen Project is a notable event that came to the Merriam Theater and left too quickly. At least Philadelphia had an opportunity denied to New York and most other American cities, where this piece hasn't yet played.

This poignant theatrical invention was written, designed and directed by Robert Lepage, an acclaimed innovator best known for his high-tech projections and props. Some audience members were familiar with Lepage's spectacular work on KA for Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas and La Damnation de Faust at the Paris and Metropolitan Operas. Others were more knowledgeable about Lepage's avant garde plays and underground films, such as The Far Side of the Moon, The Seven Streams of the River Ota and Possible Worlds. But what we saw wasn't quite like any of these.

In The Andersen Project high-tech devices are subordinated to story-telling. Most of the drama depends on the spoken word more than on spectacle. This was fine with me, but I sensed a bit of surprise (maybe even disappointment) on the part of some audience members.

Hans Christian Andersen's secret

The principal character, Frederic (played by Lepage's friend and collaborator Yves Jacques), arrives in Paris after a tiring flight from Canada and checks into a seedy apartment with porn booths on its ground floor. He hoped for more elegant lodgings, because the general director of the Paris Opera has invited him to write the libretto for a 200th anniversary opera celebration of Hans Christian Andersen. Frederic quickly becomes disillusioned by the self-involved and condescending impresario, also played by Jacques.

Most of the dialogue is in English, and when this character speaks in French the audience sees a projected translation. (Suggestion: Perhaps in its next production these titles could appear above the actors. Here they were next to the stage floor, where some people on the orchestra level had difficulty seeing them.)

Frederic and the impresario, Arnaud, discuss their research on Denmark's national storyteller as well as their discovery that Andersen was a repressed homosexual who took notes on the attractiveness of men and boys that he met. According to his journals, Andersen never consummated a relationship but masturbated to his mental images of these men.

A dig at Domingo

Lepage's script employs humor, but it's understated, as befits the sophisticated world he evokes. For example, the fictional opera staff discusses a new production of Wagner's Ring in the next decade and one of them comments, off-handedly, that Domingo may be dead by then (a reference to Placido's longevity as a singer, plus the fact that multiple opera companies count on him to headline new productions).

Self-reference is frequent, as in the fact that the Met has hired Lepage to design its next Ring production. And, most important, the main character resembles Lepage who was commissioned to write and direct a Hans Christian Andersen anniversary homage. Also, Lepage was diagnosed at age five with a disease called alopecia, which caused complete hair loss over his whole body. He's been bald since then, and considered himself an oddity. His alter ego in The Andersen Project is an albino.

The idea of an outsider coming to Paris reminds us that Andersen, too, came there hoping to meet and become accepted by the French literati of his time, George Sand and Victor Hugo.

Subtle special effects

Frederic proposes the staging of the Andersen story, The Dryad, about a wood-sprite who yearns to become human. The parallels are evident. Subtle special effects show the transformations of Frederic and of the spirit, plus the spirit's views of Paris.

Later, Arnaud tells his daughter a story by Andersen about a man whose shadow takes over his life. Jacques is mesmerizing here with just one simple prop, a bedroom lamp. The story's moral is that all of us have a dark side.

One special effect exists only in our minds. Frederic goes almost everywhere with a dog"“ but all we ever see is the leash, manipulated so expertly that we'd swear we saw the dog on the end of it. And my favorite effect occurred when we saw Andersen romance and undress the soprano Jenny Lind, who is actually nothing more than a dressmaker's dummy.

So all is illusion, even if it's not the extroverted spectacle we may have expected. Jacques, who met Lepage working on a Quebec stage production about Edith Piaf when both were young, is a low-key, likeable protagonist as well as an annoying employer, no to mention every other character in this interesting play.