Playground Theatre's Inanna and the Huluppu Tree resurrects ancient myths

Comments (0) By Brandon K. Thorp Thursday, Dec 17 2009

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Pavel Antonov

The cast of Inanna and the Huluppu Tree

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Inanna and the Huluppu Tree: Traditional, adapted by Stephanie Ansin and Fernando Calzadilla. Playground Theatre, 9806 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores; 305-751-9550; theplaygroundtheatre.com

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Thunderous music that sounds a lot like Dead Can Dance swells up from the theater's outsize PA with no warning. Assorted deities come and go in billows of smoke like you haven't seen since the last Kiss tour. Anzu, who looks like a cross between an ancient astronaut and the world's most ferocious chicken, blows an ear-splitting gale every time he opens his mouth. He, along with Siduri, fly around the set doing somersaults in the air.

With Inanna, the Playground Theatre transports adults to a place where magic is a given. It cannot do the same for children, because the world of magic is one they already inhabit. What the Playground Theatre does for them, whether they know it or not, is make a promise: that one day, even after the long jading of growing up has taught them that the gods do not fly, that a city, no matter how divine, cannot be sustained by fruit, there is always a place beyond the footlights where those things can be true for a while.