Theatre in Review: Chéri (Signature Theatre)Passion duels with practicality in Chéri, Martha Clarke's beguiling distillation of a pair novels by Colette. Written in the 1920s, they present a situation that still shocks: The title character is barely out of his teens and already in a passionate affair with the much older Lea, a courtesan of a certain age. The surprise is that Chéri's mother, Charlotte, has overseen the affair from the beginning. But what Charlotte has given she can also take away, and she marries off Chéri to a young woman from a good family. The lovers, sadly aware that their private paradise is not sustainable, part; there is a frantic reconciliation, but it cannot last. Then the war intervenes, and Chéri returns a broken man. This is by far the most intimately scaled of Clarke's pieces, in my experience, relying as it does on the magnetism of three stellar personalities. It will be a must-see event for ballet fans, if only for the opportunity to once again see the retired ballerina Alessandra Ferri, who here partners stunningly with Herman Cornejo in the Lea-Chéri dance of desire. This is also the most conventionally choreographed piece by Clarke that I've seen, but it is, if anything, more effective because of that. The dance interludes are filled with telling character moments -- for example, Chéri snatching a pearl necklace from Lea; later, draping it around her in a gesture of seduction; Lea all but tackling Chéri into bed. Later, the desolate Chéri stares into a mirror and sees the reflection of the departed Lea. A struggle between the two ends with him on the floor in a gesture of abasement. That each of these sequences is masterfully performed is beyond question, but they also carry a powerful erotic charge. Adding to the effect is Christopher Akerlind's stunning lighting, which uses strongly angular, directional looks and dramatic changes of color temperature to transform David Zinn's set, a rendering of the interior of a hôtel particulier in which all the angles are slightly askew. The designers add an extra level of surrealism that further heightens the intensity of these passages. But to read Colette is to know that she balanced eros with gimlet-eyed appreciation of the way the world works. Between the dance sequences, Amy Irving appears, looking sensational in one of Zinn's beautifully tailored period creations, and sporting a most Colette-like head of curls; she is Charlotte, looking on the lovers and offering her own special brand of acid commentary. "He and his mirror," she says, commenting on her son's vanity. "You must tell where you get that face powder; it gives you such a youthful glow," she tells Lea, by way of reminding her how close to 50 she is. Irving has a brilliant high-style technique; to see her in Chéri is to regret that we don't see her more often in roles that can make use of it. Still, it's not just her way with a remark about "that dreadful Eiffel Tower" that makes her so valuable here. It's the juxtaposition of the powerfully intimate dance scenes and Charlotte's coruscating narrative that creates a kind of implied drama. It certainly helps that Chéri is danced to a selection of ravishing works by the likes of Ravel and Wagner and that the sound design, by Arthur Solari and Samuel Crawford, is also beautifully handled. Chéri captures Colette's essential worldliness as well as the importance of romantic love to her female characters; in her books, the women may suffer more than the men, but they also have stronger survival skills, a fact underlined by Chéri's ultimate fate (not to be revealed here). The result is a perfectly wrought little thing of beauty that will likely speak to those who have read the books and those who have not. Chéri is a brief piece, running little more than an hour, but the feelings it engenders may last for days. --David Barbour 
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