Rose and the Rime

To my knowledge, Robert Wilson has never directed a fifth-grade class play. While Europe’s relatively lavish arts funding might allow for such a project—much of the American visual auteur Wilson’s work is bankrolled there—Chicagoans need not book a transatlantic ticket. A reasonable facsimile is now available. The latest offering from the House Theatre pairs the company’s flair for lush spectacle with an aggressively juvenile scenario.

The House has always skated on thin ice with its celebration of the Magic of Storytelling and its power to awaken the Child Within. While a certain goofy charm saved its previous servings of superhero and Western pastiche, the grim whimsy of Rose is unrelenting: This is perhaps the most elaborate homage to the Snow Miser segment of Year Without a Santa Claus ever devised. The town of Radio Falls labors under permanent winter, until the intrepid Rose (tireless, pixielike Carolyn Defrin) retrieves a magic coin from the Rime Witch. But as Rose and we learn at length, all gifts come with a price, evil lurks within the hearts of men, and, yes, every rose has its thorn.

Not that the production lacks for exuberance. Designer Collette Pollard transforms the interior of the Chopin into a snow globe, within which elaborate, kinetic sequences portray the perilous journey through icy wastes and forests of evil trees. And after this past winter, the cast’s frenetic swimsuit sequence comes as genuinely cathartic. But you don’t need winter to think that, for all its flash, Rose and the Rime feels like nothing at all.

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