Poohsticks stretches childhood favorite to limit

Traditionalists beware: Poohsticks is not for the classics-minded opera goer. With television monitors flashing and characters draped in minimalist costumes subtly representing their characters, the production is one that wins for originality. However, it wanders aimlessly in circles before finally pinning down a theme at its conclusion.

Based on A.A. Milne's The House At Pooh Corner story, "In Which Pooh Invents a New Game and Eeyore Joins In," Poohsticks, composed by Sophocles (Steve) Papavasilopoulos (OC'97), is considered a chamber opera, meshing together modernist recitative and over-acted choreography, set to dissonant orchestration seeping through the background. The Poohsticks plot is taken from a chapter in the children's "Winnie the Pooh" stories: Pooh finds delight in dropping sticks into the stream on one side of a bridge, quickly running to the other side, and following his sticks downstream where they are whisked away into the current.

Pooh's simple, whimsical pastime may read sweet in a children's book, but when the act of "playing poohsticks" is repeated multiple times over a half-painted children's fort-like bridge in Wilder Main, some of the charm is lost. In this sense, the entire base that Poohsticks builds its story from is not stable enough for even a 50-minute opera.

However, Poohsticks has a lot to offer creatively, and its small cast of six college students and 11-year-old Oberlin resident Kyle Igneczi as Christopher Robin bring the story to life in Wilder Main's intimate setting. Senior Michelle Holko plays an animated Roo, and Eeyore, conservatory senior David Rinaldi and Tigger, college first-year Sarah Wolfman-Robichaud, yuk-up their opposing characters for comic relief amidst college first-year Patrick Mulryan's Winnie-the-Pooh, which is often a bit too dramatic.

The performance opens on the playroom, upon which Christopher Robin enters and, after toying around with various brightly colored stuffed animals, finally settles himself in front of a large television. We watch him as he watches the big gray box, eyes in a glaze, and a sunken feeling takes over the set. What happened to the imaginative Christopher Robin who could day-dream for hours of his Poohbear and the adventures that followed? Only when the television begins to go on the fritz does the frustrated Christopher Robin lose interest, and the imaginative plot unfolds.

Where Pooh's first appearance on-stage gives Mulryan plenty of opportunity to make a strong impression, he enters the set too deliberately, singing "Tra la la, dum dee dee" in a high tenor sans any melodic focal point, and though he makes a bee-line to the bridge for the first series of "playing poohsticks," the action lags and Mulryan fails to hook his audience into his character development.

Fortunately, brief intermissions of crafty video animation and popular music interludes break up Poohsticks into pieces; the huge slide drape looming behind the set lit up to mark simple turns in the plot and character introduction. A striking contrast to the overly-primitive graphics for the floating poohsticks, the opera's video shorts could be aesthetically creative works in themselves when singled out from their broader context.

Some video scenes are especially vague - static-enhanced Barbie and Ken float into a sea of blue in time to new age music - but one short puts the entire performance in perspective. A stick figure by the name of Mr. Stickles, appropriately, gives sound advice to the curious audience: "I like to play poohsticks with a friend." When the lights rise again for the final section, entitled "Playing Poohsticks," the opera finally takes focus.

The final scene is a showdown of honesty between Tigger and Eeyore: whether or not the former "bounced" the latter into the river causing him wet bitterness. The high point of Poohsticks comes when Christopher Robin, who has up to this point remained silently musing in the corner, enters the scene to settle the dispute. In the midst of all six characters' chaotic chorus, the small tow-headed boy's voice shines through with clarity, offering an innocently brilliant alternative to the hostility that has built up.

Poohsticks stands out amongst recent Oberlin productions as something of the bizarre. It is a children's tale, like that of Into the Woods, but its abstract mentality pushes its audience well over the line between interpretive and obscure. Open-minded modernist opera-goers may be disappointed in how loosely Poohsticks follows the rules, but 50 minutes is enough time for the production to work itself into Pooh Corner and out again.

Poohsticks runs tonight and tomorrow night at 8 p.m. in Wilder Main, and 2 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. Tickets are sold out.