'Argonautika' sails above mere mythology

Most classical myths have a seemingly distant relationship with modern popular culture and consciousness. Not so Jason and the Argonauts. Thanks in part to the popularity of Don Chaffey's 1963 cinematic classic of stop-motion animation -- a TV staple for anyone growing up in the 1970s --the spectacular quest for the Golden Fleece feels like it belongs more to the pulpy realm of Luke Skywalker, Buck Rogers, Captain Kirk and other boyish adventures than the Homeric world of the Odyssey or the Iliad.

Mary Zimmerman -- that most legitimate of theatrical artists -- certainly hasn't gone Hollywood with her all-new, typically smart, fresh, endlessly imaginative and thoroughly enjoyable "Argonautika," which for my money is her most important and potentially most lucrative new show since 1998's "Metamorphoses."

But longtime watchers of her work will detect a new ease with populism, accessibility, urbanity and the tastes of the young -- occasioned, perhaps, by material that includes hairy men fighting sea monsters, but also a consequence of the growing maturity of a great Chicago artist with little left to prove.

Zimmerman and her close associates at the Lookingglass Theatre Company should take a leaf from "The Pirate Queen" and think of this debut production -- which surely will be a huge hit at the Lookingglass box-office -- as a kind of out-of-town tryout. The piece could use more musical strength, and it goes temporarily off the rails in the second act, when the nautical quest for the fleece dissipates, the outer narrative loses its tension and centrality, and the intensely explored neuroses of Medea hijack the whole darn thing (she's a fascinating character, with all manner of reasonable grievances, but her name ain't the title here).

All of that can easily be fixed. Even now, the show (staged with the audience on either side of Dan Ostling's wooden, boatlike setting) recovers well before the end. It concludes with a glorious visual tie-in between the events we've just witnessed and the symbols of contemporary astrology (telling the audience things it probably did not know). And the first act already is a sizzling theatrical adventure, full of mythical flourish and dramatic excitement, but also replete with Zimmerman's ability to take one step back from the fanciful story and ponder its deeper truths.

Fixed up, "Argonautika" should follow "Metamorphoses" to New York.

For at least 15 years, Zimmerman has been reminding us all that countries such as Iraq or Iran, and cities such as Baghdad, are the central conduits for the unifying myths of western civilization, not the fraught, atrophied "others" we see on the nightly news. This show is exceptionally strong in that vital regard. But there are other life truths dispensed here, often by Mariann Mayberry, in fabulous form here as a pumped-up goddess Athena, who guides events, explains their meaning and tells the wind which way to blow.

Zimmerman also has a colossal asset in the superb actor Glenn Fleshler, who plays two entirely opposite characters with dazzling fullness: His Hercules is warm and engaging, even as his evil Aeetes makes your bones shiver.

Through Fleshler, Mayberry and Ryan Artzberger's rich depiction of troubled Jason, the show ponders the suddenness of loss and how it never advertises itself in advance, so we might prepare. It muses on how sexual love is perhaps the closest we ever get to heaven on earth, and yet often subsequently produces hell on earth. And, most powerful of all, the show seems to understand that our quests in life are rarely formulated or accomplished without ambivalence.

The morning after Saturday's opening, I am still recovering from a moment wherein a wriggling puppet baby, designed by Michael Montenegro, is quietly murdered by the simple cutting of its strings. Even though we know it's going to happen, it's still a heart-stopper.