Canadian director Robert Lepage has been in the news a lot here in the past three years — though maybe he didn’t get the kind of coverage he wanted. Mostly he got flak for his staging of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle at the Met, the set of which was a 45-ton moving contraption that either creaked loudly or simply broke down.
And then there was the time the computer running the projections crashed and the Windows reboot signal flashed across the stage.
It was just like a highbrow version of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”
Now Lepage is at BAM with a much more intimate play that showcases his strength: visually imaginative storytelling.
In “The Blue Dragon,” Lepage reprises the role of Pierre Lamontagne, a Québécois artist he already played in 1985’s “The Dragons’ Trilogy.” Though the new show is a sequel of sorts, you can easily follow it without having seen the previous one.
Now middle-aged, Pierre has given up on his own creative dreams and runs a gallery in Shanghai. He’s visited by an old pal and occasional lover, Claire Forêt (Marie Michaud), who’s come to pick up the young daughter she adopted from afar — only to be turned down for not “bonding” with her.
Crushed, Claire finds comfort in friendship with one of Pierre’s artists, Xiao Ling (Tai Wei Foo) — without realizing she’s also his girlfriend.
Though Lepage has long been considered an avant-garde artist, his work actually is very accessible. “The Blue Dragon” is no exception. The production achieves a cinematic feel with relatively simple effects: A model train evokes the one that takes Claire away. Stylized projections effectively represent falling snow or a bustling Chinese city.
And while the show deals with serious topics, the acting and writing — by Lepage and Michaud — are touched with light humor. Which is a good thing considering the plot’s pretty sudsy and could easily have gone into hackneyed melodrama.
While the story isn’t strictly autobiographical, Lepage has said it’s personal. He himself is highly successful, so you have to wonder what he’s trying to tell us with three characters who give up on their creative dreams. Maybe you can afford to be ambivalent when you’re at the top.