GRAND TOUR

By BRAD LEITHAUSER

Journey to the west, which had its world premiere early this month at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, induces a pair of sensations. First it occurs to you that what you're watching is children's theater. Then you realize how impoverished our notion of adult theater is if we would cede these splendors to children, for this is a play constructed from the rich rudiments of dramatic art -dreams, mime, burlesque, magic.

Its director and adapter, Mary Zimmerman, has chiseled her story from a megalithic 16th century Chinese novel, Hsi Yu Chi. It tells of a spiritual quest, drawing on the legend of a 7th century monk who journeyed to India to bring Buddhist scriptures back to China. A trio of supernatural familiars attend him: a monkey, a pig and a river spirit. They are archetypal figures, as timeless as the Nereids who rescued Jason and the Argonauts, or the three sidekicks who accompanied Judy Garland into Oz.

The picaresque narrative might be described as a cross between the Odyssey and the Arabian Nights. Or perhaps as a shaggy-dog story about a monkey: Douglas Hara, playing the monkey spirit, often steals the show. He's a cartwheeling, somersaulting, scaffold-climbing presence who occasionally releases, in his rare moments of repose, a pleasant simian cooing. The production abounds in lovely visual effects. Blending silks and spotlights, dragons and conveyor belts, Zimmerman serves up the Court of the Jade Emperor, a courier from Buddha, a ghost-king. There are slow stretches-much of the burlesque falls flat-but the overall effect is dazzling. You leave with your inner eye aglow.