The trick has been to activate the narrative - so often the narrative can be a veil between the audience and the story.” It’s exhilarating, an epic maritime adventure, and it established many of the tropes of pirates, from parrots to peglegs, all of that comes from here. “I knew as soon as I started reading ‘Treasure Island’ that it belonged on the stage. “It’s so very beautifully written,” says the 55-year-old Zimmerman, in her customary part chatty, part scholarly manner during a break in rehearsals at Berkeley Rep. This is the West Coast premiere of the latest theatrical spectacle from the always visually ingenious director. A coproduction with Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre, this high seas adventure runs through June 5 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, adapted and directed by Zimmerman. “Treasure” charts the topsy-turvy course of Jim Hawkins, a young lad who is swept up with the infamous pirate Long John Silver and his band of scalawags seeking buried treasure on a faraway island. “I love the challenge of staging the impossible,” says the Tony-winning director, “That’s what excites me.” The Chicago-based theatrical alchemist has journeyed through a canon of eye-popping legends such as the tragic and hypnotic “The White Snake” and her mesmerizing Tony-winning twist on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” Now she is setting sail once again for a voyage through the Robert Louis Stevenson classic “Treasure Island.” Mary Zimmerman is an old salt when it comes to sailing the high seas of myth and fable.
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