From the moment you enter the theatre to witness Andrew Kim's “Vertigo of Sheep” (and Kathy Bradley's-she was much more than an accordion accompanist!) you're struck by the extraordinary quality of the production values. At once moody, mysterious and inviting, the set seems like nothing so much as a welcoming ancient apothecary, and from the warm and rich, yet “shopworn” look of it, we expect that it can offer us an effective palliative. We're right.

My original impetus was to say this play utilizes actor, musician and object theatre, but on further thought I'd say it uses object and icon theatre to tell familiar Bible stories, and Kim manages this without being iconoclastic. He presents the classic lesson-rich stories Jacob's Dream, Abraham & Isaac, Sodom & Gomorrah (with a silent finger to his lip-oh my!), and the like as if they were everyday tales and he's action them out for a favorite nephew.

Using his entire body as a well tuned, expressive instrument (Robert Smythe told me once that most American actors act only from the neck up, but he would have no complaints here even though Kim's marvelous mugging is a delight in itself), Kim uses everything at his disposal to bring these tales to life… a drawer becomes an oven; forks become heart-wrenching humans; a cabinet serves as a Punch & Judy-like booth; in a one sided dialogue you understand clearly the unspoken voice. Some stories require “puppets” and others don't-Kim wisely does not include them in scenes where the human actor is more effective alone.

As in “The Unlikely Birth of Istvan”, there were Brechtian devices at work here. Though you were (except in one tale) completely drawn into the storytelling, you never forgot that you were watching a highly theatrical presentation. Kim seamlessly wrought uber-familiar Bible stories some new and compelling existential questions for me, and now I can't wait to see more of his work.