Ackermann's 'Taster' Too Bloated for Comfort

Sometimes, a play, like a  meal, should be small. Joan Ackermann’s “The Tasterâ€� is one of those.

This  hugely overblown work, directed by Tina Packer, careens around the stage at Shakespeare & Company for 130 minutes, trampling, at every opportunity, its several special moments.

Among those special moments are Rocco Sisto’s as Octavio, a devoted servant who tastes the Basque king’s dinner for poison. Sisto, a refined and explicit actor, surveys these meals, always topped by large and fanciful birds in full feather. Then, he tests for regicidal intentions, applying chemicals with an eye dropper, and studying the meal before him with a magnifying glass before taking a bite or two. Finally, he upends an hourglass, checks his pulse at the carotid artery and waits.

Too bad this delightful business is followed by cogitations about the moon and its ability to “suggest rather then expose� what it lights.

Skip five centuries and we are in Manhattan with Claudia  (Maureen O’Flynn who also plays the Basque queen), an opera singer trying to figure out what’s in her Chinese takeout. Not chicken, she figures. Not pork. Certainly not beef.

“It might be bad,� she concludes. Her husband, Henry (Tom O’Keefe who also plays the king), lost his taste for life between the making of his second and third Wall Street millions. Now Henry has lost his fortune, too, and spends his days eating pomegranates (“one of the world’s 12 best foods� says Syd, a nutritionist played by Sisto) and translating Basque texts.

Ackermann is a fine playwright. She skillfully rockets us between 16th-century Basque country and 21st-century New York. And “The Big Picture,� performed last year at Mixed Company in Great Barrington, is a penetrating and soulful work. So are other of her one-act plays like “Sheltering Snow� and “A Great Looking Boat,� and full-length works like “The Batting Cage,� and “Off the Map.�

But she gets lost in “The Taster.� It founders in pretentious language and flimsy notions. And Packer drives Sisto into overdrive a couple of times, leaving the actor no place to go.

O’Flynn, who sings a Basque ­lullaby beautifully, has a better time of it, and so does O’Keefe — especially good talking about finding his way by working as a restaurant prep cook.

But sometimes, all this chatter about the meaning of taste, its loss, its value, and the search for an utterly truthful and authentic voice, seems like the playwright struggling with more than just her script.

“The Taster� runs at Shakespeare & Company’s Founders Theatre through Sept. 4. For tickets: 413-637-3353.