In ‘Tween Earth and Sky, Mark Lyon of California’s Windwhistle Theatre performs four cautionary tales from Irish folklore. Filled with fantastical elements ranging from fairy gold to weeping stones to a bargain with the devil, the show has many ingredients of a family-friendly hour of traditional storytelling. Regrettably, though, Lyon’s passion for the material doesn’t translate to performance, with most scenes either falling emotionally flat or suffering a plague of overacting.

Lyon looks the part, complete with period costume. He also exudes a certain sweetness and Irish sensibility, though his attempt at a legitimate dialect seems halfhearted, with only a couple of vowel sounds and speech patterns emphasized. His tale of a talking corpse is worth a few laughs, and his story of families and lovers torn asunder (à la Romeo and Juliet) is somewhat moving, but Lyon struggles to differentiate between his many characters and consistently fails to fill the empty stage with the same magic that imbues the stories themselves.

Tween Earth and Sky
Red Venue
Wednesday, May 17, 8:00 PM
Saturday, May 20, 11:30 AM
Sunday, May 21, 7:00 PM
Tuesday, May 23, 7:30 PM
Thursday, May 25, 5:30 PM
Saturday, May 27, 1:00 PM
Sunday, May 28, 8:45 PM
tickets

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This article appears in May 10-16, 2017.