BRONZE MIRROR

A dazzling extension of the author's Silk Road (1989)—not a sequel but a reprise, with new casting, of Larsen's time-riddling, worlds-whirling magical show, which again takes place in the palaces of the immortals (wherever they may be—some are underwater), also on the earth of medieval China (here, the Southern Soong of A.D. 1136), and spaces in-between. ``All desires bring about consequences.'' The Yellow Emperor, his court, and the Silkweb Princess, his wife, with her seven goddesses-in-waiting, should have harkened to this wisdom of the bodhisattva, Guan-yin the Compassionate. But when the Emperor's minister reports he's worked out a system of symbols, writing and illustration ensue. Stories are invented, and through a story competition, desires are pricked, and ``souls are now set in motion.'' The core tale is that of Pomegranate, maid to the sad Lady Phoenix, who may or may not rise from the ashes of a cruel and miserable household, a dead absent husband, a burnt city. Refractions from Pomegranate's story fly about: a scholar visits hell; a luscious ghost visits a river god; the Moon Goddess (on the go in Silk Road) has a brief cameo; and local deities dread the time when they ``become no more than a story.'' Meanwhile, the Yellow Emperor's court buzzes with the gossip of story-lives: love, lust, quests, obligations, deaths, etc. But alas for the immortals when Guan-yin delivers a sentence, and there's a butterfly- brilliant GîtterdÑmmerung. Again, as in Silk Road, Larsen disarmingly parodies the pith and polish of ancient Chinese myth, with wit and poetic/pictorial pyrotechnics. A quite special pleasure.