Making time The Theatre Coop offers a fable for grown-ups BY IRIS FANGER
	What Time Is It? By Vladimir Zelevinsky. Directed by Lesley Chapman. Set by Doc Madison. Lighting by Amy Lee. Costumes by Tracy Campbell. Music and sound by Izhar Schejter. With Stacy Fischer, Michael Avellar, Kim Anton Myatt, Peter Brown, Jason Myatt, and Lida McGirr. At the Theatre Cooperative through May 29.

If fairy tales are fraught with obstacles to be overcome, so, too, are dramas that depend on magic, especially for adult audiences. A case in point is Vladimir Zelevinsky’s new What Time Is It?, which was commissioned by the Theatre Cooperative. In literary form, such stories are intended to teach a lesson about solving difficult problems — for instance, the vanquishing of enemies who stand in the way of happily-ever-after. The victory is often accomplished through the courage and wit of the least powerful person in the community. For playwrights, however, the pitfalls include writing cute and the need to coax audiences into a willing suspension of disbelief — big time.

Zelevinsky has undertaken to write a fable for our times, or so one supposes, in the two-act What Time Is It?, which is set in 16th-century Nürnberg, "when and where the first clock was invented," according to the program note. (The Encyclopædia Britannica states that the earliest clocks seem to have come into use in Europe during the 13th century, with the invention of the first clock credited to Pope Silvester II in AD 996, but never mind.) Zelevinsky introduces Martin, the timekeeper of Nürnberg, who stops the town clock to delay the wedding of his beloved, Agnes, to his friend Hans. Two corporate villains — Krupp, the owner of the coal mines, and Madame Singer, who runs the textile factory — are intrigued by Martin’s scheme and ask that he keep the clock on slow motion so they can trick their laborers into working longer hours. "Time is money," they declare. Martin’s new-found power goes to his head as he extorts money from the bosses, plots to overthrow them, and finally becomes the local dictator. He establishes a guild that’s a mediæval version of the Homeland Security Office to root out such deviant behavior as growing sunflowers, building sundials, and scrawling graffiti on the town walls that asks, "What Time Is It?"

Hans falls into Martin’s clutches, but Agnes does not. She’s the flower seller, growing her blossoms from seed and tending them with love, all the time speaking in poetic similes, in contrast to the money grubbers around her. Martin is given to climbing up on platforms to deliver hard-edged speeches promising the 16th-century German equivalent of bread and circuses to the mobs, which follow him. Despite their different philosophies, Martin continues to hit on Agnes, alternating promises of reform with threats to make time run backward.

Unlike Little Red Riding Hood and Jack the Giant Killer, who play out the morals of their stories, Zelevinsky’s characters declare the message loud and clear, lest the audience miss it. And unlike the old-time fairy-tale folks, who have a little doubt, mischief, and despondency mixed into their personalities, Martin and his cohort are black from the corruption of power whereas Agnes, the Little Mary Sunshine of the Marketplace, is white and pure in her desire to make the world a better place. Worse still, in terms of tradition, Martin is not punished at the end, just put to sleep with a bedtime story by Agnes.

Time and its properties as a new frontier and the corollary effects of its exploration on the human condition would be well worth a theatrical outing, as has been demonstrated by science-fiction and time-travel novels and films. But Zelevinsky seems more intent on having his invented characters push the parallels to modern-day America. The Theatre Cooperative’s unevenly matched cast of six, led by Stacy Fischer as Agnes and Michael Avellar as Martin, struggles valiantly with dialogue like "Marry me. Why? Because you and me are special." and "Good morning. It’s always morning.", not to mention anachronisms in terms of time, place, and language. Director Lesley Chapman has set the pace to run as slowly as Martin’s manipulated clock.

Fairy tales are told to children at bedtime to offer hope about a future in which they will take control. Perhaps Zelevinsky intends a similarly soothing theme, suggesting that Americans frustrated by the mess of the national body politic can resolve the situation by believing in dreams of happy endings.