The Clay Cart is a 2000 year old play originally written in sanskrit. The description thrilled me: “Bursting with music and dance, color, action, and romance . . .” and I was eager to see what the always-innovative OSF created for our delectation. Sadly, it was disappointing.

The acting was good, the staging exquisite. The production clearly treats the audience as another person in the play, consistently breaking the ‘fourth wall’ and using innovative prop devices (such as walls made of people and pillows and a portrait made of the actor holding an empty frame (see photo)) to involve and engage us. The scene design is innovative in it’s luxurious spareness (actors stand up from their pillows at the edge of the stage to hold sticks at waist level to represent doors) and there is a deft touch of comedic lightness in most scenes. It was fun to watch.

But the story is hard to get truly engaged in. It’s definitely Shakespearean in its flavor — a story that juxtaposes romance and political upheaval, characters that span all strata of society, lovers kept apart by the opposition of others and by the escalation of unlikely circumstance. I can see why it was chosen this year, Bill Rauch’s inaugural year as the artistic director (Rauch has directed this play in various incarnations previously). I found myself just not caring about whether the noble but now penniless Brahamin succeeded in taking the good-hearted courtesan as his second wife, winning her free from the truly awful King’s brother in law. Somewhere in there a Brahimin thief is redeemed by buying the courtesan’s slave girl and making her his (free) wife, and both the evil king and his evil brother in law are overthrown by the secret king in exile.

This performance gets an A for execution and a D for story — an overall C production.