Zimmerman sets new course with Berkeley Rep ‘Treasure Island’

Mary Zimmerman’s dog is upstaging the pirates. It’s a rainy Saturday morning, and the cast of Zimmerman’s “Treasure Island” has assembled in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s rehearsal hall for round two of this new theatrical adaptation of the childhood literary classic.

A co-production of Berkeley Rep and Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre, “Treasure Island” had a hit run late last year in the Windy City and now begins its West Coast run, the latest in a long line of shows that have made Zimmerman one of the Bay Area’s favorite returning artists.

Since 1996, when Berkeley Rep mounted “Journey to the West,” Zimmerman has returned every few years with shows defined by their grand theatricality, their elegance and beauty and their enthusiasm for the telling of tales. “Treasure Island” is Zimmerman’s eighth show at Berkeley Rep, and this one is a little different — more focused on script and character and perhaps a little less on theatrical flair.

“I hope people don’t feel ‘Treasure Island’ is more prosaic than my other shows,” Zimmerman says during a pre-rehearsal interview. “But it is. It is from a work of prose and the singular consciousness of Robert Louis Stevenson as opposed to the myths and fairy tales and that kind of archetypal consciousness in my other work. Nothing supernatural happens here. It has a higher concentration on acting, which, in my opinion, is superlative.”

Most of the Chicago cast has reassembled (with the exception of Steven Epp, another Berkeley Rep favorite, stepping in as one-legged Long John Silver), and the day’s rehearsal can wait a few minutes while Andy, an adorable mutt — part beagle, part mysterious mountain dog — entertains cast and crew with a show of his own involving balletic leaps and a gracefully tossed bone.

The dog soon calms down, and Zimmerman begins running the show from the top. Her delight in her actors is apparent. A smile rarely leaves her face as she watches them work through a scene involving young Jim Hawkins (John Babbo) and a drunken Billy Bones (Christopher Donohue, who was also in “Journey to the West,” among many other Zimmerman productions, and whom she calls “one of my closest creative collaborators”).

Zimmerman was inspired to stage the oft-staged, oft-adapted “Treasure Island” when she was vacationing in Maine and went to the local library expressly to see if there was some major piece of children’s literature that had passed her by.

“As soon as I started reading it, I saw it happening, literally, in an artificial environment onstage,” she says. “It is full of vivid dialogue and characters and a lot of action and inherently has a lot of theatricality to it, even though its settings and plot pose real challenges onstage.”

In addition to Stevenson’s writing, which Zimmerman calls unequaled in children’s literature, the Tony Award-winning director says the story has a universal appeal.

“It speaks to the longing we all have for more life, more life,” she says. “Not more years but a more vivid existence, where your wits and mettle are tested and you never know what’s around the corner. It also presents a beautifully moral world. Jim has to figure out what kind of man he’s going to be as he learns from trusting the wrong person, who is charming to him, and mistrusting the right person, who isn’t. It seems that’s an important lesson and can’t be said enough.”

If Berkeley Rep loves Zimmerman, the feeling is definitely mutual. “This is an incredibly well-run company with good morale,” she says. “It’s a good place to work. I love Berkeley, too — the perfume in the air, the intellectual quality in the air. I also have a love affair with (Berkeley Rep Managing Director) Susie Medak. She’s a Chicagoan originally, and I just adore her.”

Medak calls Zimmerman, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, “a completely genuine person. She’s funny and smart, and she connects completely.”

As a storyteller, Medak adds, Zimmerman “captures big ideas and still finds what is deeply personal and human in a story. She is irrepressibly romantic and lighthearted without being a lightweight.”

Usually, when Zimmerman brings a show to Berkeley, she puts it back together and doesn’t make many changes. For “Treasure Island,” however, she has done more rewriting and reshaping than she ever has before. “I’m losing some of the narration, even though I’m in love with it,” she says. “We’re finding it’s more lively and theatrical to show instead of tell.”

Back in the rehearsal room, Donohue’s Billy Bones grabs hold of a trunk to guard it, and the actor cuts his finger enough to need a Band-Aid. “Aha!” he tells Zimmerman, holding up his wound. “What I learned from Lookingglass is it’s not art until there’s blood!”

Chad Jones is a San Francisco freelance writer who blogs at www.theaterdogs.net.

Treasure Island

By Robert Louis Stevenson. Adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman. Previews Tuesday, April 26-Thursday, April 28. Opens Friday, April 29. Through June 5. $29-$97 (subject to change). Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. (510) 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org.

Director-adapter Mary Zimmerman reveals her inspiration for “Treasure Island”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwWxR02e2iE

A peek at Mary Zimmerman’s “Treasure Island”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNNhG3lR4cg

Mary Zimmerman at Berkeley Repertory Theatre

Journey to the West, 1996

Metamorphoses, 1999

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, 2003

The Secret in the Wings, 2004

Argonautika, 2007

The Arabian Nights, 2008 and 2010

The White Snake, 2012

Treasure Island, 2016