Centerstage - Chicago's Original City Guide

Lookingglass Theatre's new production of "Manuscript Found in Saragossa" is strange, beautiful and pleasant-smelling. Not once, but twice during the course of the show, an ensemble member walks across the stage swinging incense. The more theatrical religions have been using scent to create atmosphere for millennia. Bless director Christine Mary Dunford for taking the technique from Sunday morning to Saturday night.

The story of "Manuscript," is peculiarly well-suited to fragrant ritual. Loosely based on an 18th-century novel by Jan Potocki, this "fever dream adventure" is a mish-mash of Orientalism, swashbuckling and the Picaresque. Newly commissioned officer Alphonse von Worden (the puppyish Lawrence Distasi) wants only to please his duel-obsessed father by becoming a man of the sword. While trekking to his army regiment in Madrid, Alphonse takes a detour in the Sierra Morena mountains, which he cannot seem to leave. He spends a traumatic night at a vacant inn, and instead of moving on to grander adventures, he is compelled to dally with an ever-increasing flock of madmen, mystics and gypsies, most of them claiming to have had similar experiences at the devilish hotel.

"Manuscript" uses the boxes-within-boxes narrative technique of the Arabian Nights. Everyone Alphonse meets has another story, which they have no intention of putting off until another time. In Lookingglass's staging, the Russian-doll tales become an embarrassment of riches, each new beginning the spur for another moment of lyrical staging. "Manuscript's" curved wooden stage strongly suggests a ship. Though poor, honorable Alphonse can't get out of the mountains, the agile cast can take that ship anywhere.

Dunford, who also adapted the novel, has given these endless narratives a point, and a specific one at that. But in making a lesson of Alphonse's non-journey, she may have diminished the joy of the play's digressions. I was left wanting more of the most delightful tales, like that of Rebecca, a nice Jewish girl with two immortal husbands, or that of Zato, a bandit whose once-beautiful mother neglected him in order to brew vast pots of ink. Without giving anything away, Dunford has instilled a moral in "Manuscript." Still, that moral is overwhelmed by the stories that make up Alphonse's story, which are persuasive of nothing greater than their own power to enchant.

Playing at Lookingglass Theatre Company (at Water Works); 821 N. Michigan Ave.; (312) 337-0665; $20-$58. Through Dec. 11; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday; 6:30 p.m. Thursday; 7:30 p.m. Friday; 3 p.m. & 8 p.m. Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday.