A liberatingly surreal and exquisitely poetic masterwork, Fernando Arrabal’s Garden of Delights is a sinister fairytale that concerns itself with the inner struggles of Lais, a famous actress living in a secluded castle with only her sheep and a small, grotesque, ape-like halfwit she mostly keeps locked in a cage. Ildiko Nemeth, in helming New Stage Theater Company’s current production of the work, infuses it with a warmth and groundedness that brilliantly compliment its absurd, intellectual elements; her insightful and precise direction elicit from the actors dynamic and nuanced performances.

The play can be read as calling for Lais to be, at times, ridiculously theatrical, egotistical and callous – an eccentric ruler of her psychic domain – alternately coddling her sheep (played by beautiful, half-naked women in adorable sheep costumes) and lording over her little Neanderthalian pet Zenon (the delightfully uninhibited Chris Tanner). Kaylin Lee Clinton plays Lais instead with a lovely subtlety, interpreting her character as a sort-of failed narcissist, as if Lais is trying to be frivolous and aloof but cannot – her soul is too gentle to let her indulge in such freedoms completely. Her eccentricity seems weighed down by her exhaustion, from her inner turmoil, her self-imposed isolation, from the demands of the present and her memories of the past.

Brandon Olson is wonderfully ambiguous as Telco, a mysterious man whom Lais, as a young girl, meets in the forest after escaping from an orphanage run by sadistic nuns. Telco seems to exist in twilight, in those moments between dream and wakefulness. At times he’s a guide, at others he acts like a predator, his sexuality is fluid, he is kind, then he’s cruel, then apathetic; he has stairs in his chest and his soul in a jam jar. Mr. Olson’s performance, exciting and truthful throughout, creates a presence on stage at once seductive, dangerous and mystical. Belle Caplis delivers an energized and convincing rendering of Miharca, Lais’s friend from the orphanage who aspires to be her lover.

With sparse but perfect set decorations by Ms. Nemeth, many of the time/space transformations are accomplished with the aid of video images projected onto several flats set up on the stage (projection design, video-art and animations by Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger). It’s an interesting concept that mostly works, creating multi-layered, colorful worlds. However, I would have liked for the visuals to have a bit more focus, in the sense that when they play the eye wanders; it’s a little distracting. The goal might well be to disorient and confuse, to cause anxiety, but I’m not certain that distracting visuals accomplish this. Also, the amount of Federico Restrepo’s light on the stage often makes the video images fainter than it seems they’re intended to be. (In the photographs accompanying this article we see how the projected images seemed to have been intended to look. Unfortunately in real life they are softer and more diluted.)

Something else I wasn’t completely sold on was that the action doesn’t seem to quite fill the stage. I can see a reason for this being the desire to show Lais’s empty isolation. But somehow looking at those big bare patches of black floor, marked up with dents, scratches and tape, it doesn’t feel quite right.

The wonderfully evocative original music is by Jon Gilbert Leavitt, and the choreography is by Catherine Correa and Ms. Nemeth—in collaboration with the actors, who are Geraldine Dulex, Gideon Grossman, Denice Kondik, Valerie Miller, Florencia Minniti, Devin Nelson, Fabiyan Pemble-Belkin, Emma Pettersson, Alexandra Pike, Juliana Silva, and Jeanne Lauren Smith.

Surrealism is alive and well in The New Stage Theatre Company’s production of Fernando Arrabal’s Garden of Delights. It is a stimulating, modern production, full of techno music and video projections, including snippets of Bosch’s famous painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. The 80 year-old Spanish-French author, associate of Breton, Tzara, Jodorowsky and Warhol, is even attending performances, and it looked like the chorus line of half-naked women dressed as sheep met with everyone’s approval.

What’s so shocking and/or relevant about a play written in 1968 which features semi-erotic dancing by girls in a Catholic orphanage? As far as I can see, the story is mankind’s attempts to avoid pleasure, and when those attempts fail, the pains and scars of pleasure. Even though it’s funny onstage, Christianity enshrines suffering as well as salvation. So when the orphan girls Lais (Kaylin Lee Clinton) and Miharca (Belle Caplis) act out the nativity of Jesus, can they be blamed for including the circumcision, too? When Lais meets the dashing, glittery gold helmet-wearing Teloc (Brandon Olson) outside the orphanage’s walls, she wants to be with him. She debates whether she can lift her skirt, blame it on the wind, and go to confession afterwards. This production gets a lot of laughs for showing people clinging to the trappings of order because they can only live with a little chaos.

Meanwhile, Lais has escaped the orphanage and has grown up to be a famous actress. She keeps the hairy, lusty ape Zenon (Christopher Tanner) locked in a cage in her living room. Zenon seeks to distract her from a phone interview about her acting career so they can instead sit in an enormous egg which looks like it came out of the aforementioned Bosch painting and make orgasmic noises. A triumphant sheep-dance scene follows.

The projections and videos by Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger make for an incredibly colorful and sensual performance. Scenery changes every few seconds, and video projections show Lais’s soliloquies from many different angles. Add in Federico Restrepo’s intimate lighting and Jon Gilbert Leavitt’s original music and you have a pleasantly confrontational theater environment. Egle Paulaskaite’s costumes are just astonishing, unless you’re used to discussing existential questions while dressed for a night club on Halloween. The principal cast members mentioned above as well as assorted religious types and animals are all strong, and thankfully they are miked so they can run, fight and talk at the same time. Catherine Correa and director Ildiko Nemeth choreographed the piece, giving a very much appreciated degree of happiness to the struggle onstage. I would see NSTC’s next show, and would probably see it several times.