Chantecler

Site Installation Theatre Ensemble (SITE) at the Treehouse, Philadelphia Zoo, 3400 Girard Ave., July 13-15, 19-22, 26-29, 8 p.m. (546-8915).

If inventiveness alone were enough to carry a theatrical production, then SITE's gorgeously imaginative staging of Edmond Rostand's Chantecler would rank as one of the artistic triumphs of the year. Seldom has there been such a serendipitous marriage of play and place as there is between the Philadelphia Zoo's Treehouse and Rostand's richly textured allegorical verse drama of human emotions among the animal kingdom. The script speaks of a bee, and there, perched high over your head is a detailed Three Mile Island model, guarding his looming honeycomb. Mention a butterfly, and the monarch of Monarchs dangles before you. Trees? The mother of all banyans stands at the end of a long, sinuous avenue. Max Reinhardt would have wept for such a setting.

Once you cease your wonderment at this dizzy, near-Disney playing space, though, there is M. Rostand's play. And M. Rostand's play is, to use the more exact French sense of the word, prcieux, a delicate hothouse bloom, dewy with poetic conceits, but slightly rough going for contemporary audiences — and contemporary posteriors, if you choose to sit on floor or stairs for the full three hours.

This tale of a rooster who believes that it is his crowing which summons the morning sun operates on two distinct levels: how human these animals are, and how animal-like we humans are. In Chantecler's realm, he is the focus of all attention, good and bad, either someone to be cultivated or someone to be brought down. His well-ordered world is ultimately turned upside down by the arrival of the pheasant hen, who has taken the male's plumage for her own, and who unnerves and seduces Chantecler.

Cory Einbinder has reached into an enormous bag of tricks to give this production an almost nonstop sense of whimsy. If anything, the cleverness sometimes gets a tad frenetic; there is more than a little sense of "smoke and mirrors" about Einbinder's barrage of gimmicks. Additionally, between the vastness of the setting and the use of masks and beaks, diction suffers too often for a play so completely dependent on the flow of words.

The role of Chantecler is absolutely enormous; the great comedic actor Coquelin, who earlier made his name as Rostand's first Cyrano, died during rehearsals for Chantecler, perhaps from the shock of seeing what the part entailed. Peter Pryor has some fine moments as the rooster, but somehow loses steam progressively until, in the last few moments of the performance, it seems like it's all he can do just to remember all those lines.

David Disbrow has a better time of it as the cynical Blackbird, and Einbinder himself has a segment where he does everything short of going up in flames as the "Found Objects Cock." Rassa Leela Shields seems to hold herself back in the temptress department as the Pheasant, contributing to a certain lack of sparks between her and Pryor. Of the principal performances, the most thoroughly enjoyable is Michael Byrne's lovable lummox of a mutt, Patou.

For all the imagination, the clever bits, and the occasional flashes of brilliance about S.I.T.E.'s Chantecler, its energy runs out about half an hour before the script does. If they mean to hold the attention of their audience right on through to the end, then these chicks and ducks and geese better scurry.

— Brian Caffall