“Marjana and The Forty Thieves” is a modern retelling from the minds of the Target Margin Theater Company of The One Thousand and One Nights, directed by David Herskovits. Broken into three distinct acts, each with a unique style of storytelling, the play enthusiastically immerses the viewer in a tactile world of storytale. The collaborative, unbridled energy and years of preparation feel palpable in the production. A pillar of storytelling is turned on its head, handed a new protagonist, and dressed down in pedestrian language. The play shines its brightest when it’s not trying to. Its earnest nature is endearing and, if you let it be, transporting.
Historically, the story has centered on Ali Baba, an unassuming man who stumbles into a cave belonging to forty thieves, stuffed full of their treasure. He takes some of what is “doubly stolen” and returns to his wife. Seeking vengeance, the thieves plot to destroy Ali Baba and his household. Luckily, his slave girl, Marjana, is crafty and quick, no match for a load of hot-headed crooks. She foils their plans, preserving her master and his house, and becomes the quiet hero of the story and this production.
An ensemble of deft, beautiful actors carries the stories with confidence and passion. They leap from platforms scattered across the stage–a tented, carpeted space filled with blue light and slouchy pillows. But it’s not the elaborate face makeup or choreographed running about that speaks the loudest. It’s the moments of unforeseen intimacy – two sisters preparing to save the young women of the kingdom, the glances exchanged between two brothers, and Marjana’s utter allegiance carried in her posture alone – that make up for this sometimes jumbled interpretation.
Viewers can expect to check their coats and bags, along with their expectations of a fourth wall, at the door. Actors, with varying degrees of poignancy, address audience members both audibly and through searing eye contact. In the second act, all five actors of the ensemble drop their personas and kindly adjust theatergoers into small groups to explain how these stories came to be from a seat while serving tea and snacks, a la storytime. It’s fun, but a bit distracting, as one of the five actors let out an overzealous operatic progression during our story’s climax. The final act leads into the homespun humor this ensemble obviously feels very comfortable with.
Everyone is a part of the performance–the man smiling sweetly with his tray of tea, the stagehands marching across the space with signs signifying location changes, and even the bopping sound mixer, at one point sticking a branch into his shirt to act as a tree.
What starts as delightfully disjointed morphs into a perhaps overly intimate tale and ends the exact way this play should have: with Marjana’s rightful place in the spotlight. The ensemble feels comfortable with the space and the interactions; the only issue is figuring how to get an audience on board. But once all in, the play proves to be an amusing, albeit fragmented, exercise in the ancient art of storytelling.
