MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP-NEW YORK CITY OPERA.

MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP-NEW YORK CITY OPERA NEW YORK STATE THEATER NEW YORK, NEW YORK APRIL 11-22, 2000

Platee, the title character of this eighteenth-century comic opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau, is a grotesque water nymph (played and sung brilliantly by tenor Jean-Paul Fouchecourt), who's so vain she aspires to an affair with chief god Jupiter, no less. Jupiter, meanwhile, conspires with King Citheron and the god Mercure to make his wife Junon jealous by pretending to marry the hideous Platte: green skin, sagging breasts, a belly, knobby, webbed fingers and toes, and all.

I'm not sure what drew Mark Morris to this "comedie lyrique." Its arias are unmemorable; its plot, negligible; and its music, not especially danceable. The flimsy structure, however, does provide collaborators Morris, former couturier Isaac Mizrahi and set designer Adrianne Lobel a vehicle to indulge their whimsy. Perhaps in the spirit of the baroque, Mizrahi's costumes are a melange of styles. Jupiter and Junon (Bernard Deletre and Katharine Goeldner) are robed in ermine-trimmed royal red, a la Disney's Snow White. Mercure-Messenger to the Gods and Thespis--Inventor of Comedy (both sung by Matthew Chellis) and Momus--Personification of Sarcasm (Deletre) are tuxedoed, h la 1940s romantic comedy films. La Folie--Personification of Folly (Amy Burton) in platinum wig and white gown is Jean Harlow. King Citheron (John Rath) and the Graces wear Roman togas. And the woodland creatures--birds, frogs, ducks, et al.--are arrayed in psychedelic unitards and punk-inspired spiked hair.

In the prologue, set in an old-fashioned saloon with a lighted terrarium behind the ornate bar, Morris uses his company dancers as characters, along with the singers onstage. The effect of dancers lip-synching words actually sung by the pit chorus is unsettling. But when the scene shifts to Platee's habitat, a woodland glade with wading pool/fountain, whinsical fruit tree, and rock bridge--the terrarium exploded to full-stage size--the dancers can, fortunately, just dance.

Morris captures animal movement with wit and inventiveness: snake (Mireille Radwan-Dana) slithers along the river bank, peacock (Shawn Gannon) struts with arms crooked back like wings, blue jay (David Leventhal) flits and darts. The long recitative passages, although beautifully sung by golden-throated City Opera principals, slow the pace. Morris valiantly fills Rameau's many musical interludes with capering, parading forest creatures, but the music provides little rhythmic buoyancy.

After intermission, the spectacle escalates to Las Vegas level. The birds don beaked half-masks and wield ostrich plume fans. Iris, the Rainbow Goddess (Michelle Yard) is a human disco ball in a hooded unitard, embossed from top to toe with tiny mirrors. In the comic ballet that ensues, Jupiter disguises himself as both a jackass (played vaudeville-style by Charlton Boyd and Marjorie Folkman) and a raggedy little owl (June Omura) that plays hide-and-seek behind the feathery fans. One of the Graces (Boyd in drag) repeatedly falls over, and the four Aquilons who personify wind keep bumping into each other.

Mark Morris's choreography is always at least as good as his chosen music, and here his craft and wit often transcend Rameau's frothy score. Directing opera is a huge undertaking and it's nice to see Morris's flamboyant kinetic talent livening up what's traditionally been admired mostly for vocal grandeur and visual excess. I'm anxious to see what he will do next with a more musically scintillating score.