Playwright: adapted by Heidi Stillman from the novel by Marguerite Duras. At: Lookingglass Theatre Company at the Water Works, 821 N. Michigan Ave. Tickets: 312-337-0665; www.lookingglasstheatre.org; $36-$70 . Runs through: Nov. 10
The fashion for Parisian Courtesans as the models for romantic heroines ended with the devastating realities of World War One, but even in 1930, the Adventuress myth continues to beguile three bored adolescent French schoolgirls in what was then known as Indo-China. Helene's curiosity is restricted to her imagination, and Alice ( whom we never meet ) turns tricks for small sums behind the kitchen. The precocious teenager called only "The Child" in our narrative has bigger aspirations, however, in service of which she dresses provocatively to draw attention to her youth and European lineage. Soon she has seduced an expatriate Manchurian millionaire's sona lad considerably older than herself, but far more sexually vulnerable than the gamine whom he will come to love.
Whether The Child is viewed as a budding artist seeking experiences to fuel her future writing career or as a resourceful virgin exploiting her exotic charms to better her family's fortunes, her motives are questionable, necessitating devices designed to distance us from the cold facts: to begin with, it's a memoir, occurring long ago, during the waning days of not one, but two regimes ( French and Chinese ). Furthermore, its setting is a foreign countrythe Mysterious East yet! Oh, and since The Child must soon return to France, and The Lover is forbidden marriage with a caucasian, their liaison is briefcircumstances permitting us to revel in amoral eroticism without uncomfortable considerations of immigrant citizenship, age-of-consent laws, or, God forbid, mixed-race children.
Heidi Stillman's adaptation of Leigh Hafry's translation tempers the rhapsodic passages with backstory on The Child's unwholesome familyabsent father, bankrupt mother, spoiled-bully older and clingy boy-toy younger brothersas well as observations on pragmatic Mandarin parents and slavishly obedient offspring. Rae Gray and Tim Chiou are a suitably decorative pair of odalisques, while Amy J. Carle, Walter Owen Briggs, JJ Phillips and Allison Torem deliver sturdy portrayals of their ground-gripper colonialist archetypes. Their progress is recollected for us by its now-aged author, identified only as "M" ( but who may be The Child in real life ), played by Deanna Dunagan with a delicate charm inviting us to shelve our cynical modern sensibilities and surrender to the heady effervescence of post-Belle Epoque nostalgiaharmless enough, when savored, like absinthe, in small doses.