Argentine short story writer Jorge Luis Borges was a master at exploring fantastic scenarios with scholarly precision — as if they were factual — and usually ones with complex philosophical implications that he went into with relish.
In “Book of Sand,” a mysterious bible peddler sells the narrator a book with an infinite number of pages, with no beginning or end, in which no page once turned can ever be seen again. As with many such wondrous items in many such stories, it proves to be more of a burden than a boon. Carla Gallardo’s bible seller is in a way a simpler, more archetypal figure: the menacing, magical woman of mystery. While Rebultan’s character changes markedly over the course of the play, Gallardo’s remains relatively unchanged as a volatile, unknowable antagonist.
Director Susannah Martin’s dynamic staging immerses the viewer in the elliptical magic of the tale. Karla Hargrave’s set gives a fanciful take on the story’s themes with numerous book pages hanging from the ceiling and others wallpapering a mezzanine-like platform lining the stage and a smaller platform that opens into a book that is also a sandbox.