The King Stag, which played for one night only Tuesday at the Aronoff Center, did something wonderful. It demonstrated how ancient art forms like masks, puppetry and movement can expand a simple fable of a good prince triumphing in love and politics into theater of limitless imagination.

        Julie (The Lion King) Taymor designed the show, and proved again that the best theater isn't about technology, it's about humanity.

        The King Stag was written more than 200 years ago as a commedia dell'arte piece. The rambunctious rough-housing and buffoonery of the classic Italian theatre style is melded with the delicacy of Oriental theatrical art by director Andrei Serban and Ms. Taymor.

        So a wicked prime minister is a Kabuki-esque villain with a bat-like cape. He plots against a noble but not-too-bright king, who doesn't trust himself to choose a beautiful, virtuous wife, but does tell the prime minister too many of his magical secrets.

        Korean bird puppets flutter overhead, a forest comes to life with shadow puppets, human-sized two-dimensional stags bound about the stage with the aid of puppeteers.

        The King Stag enjoys a sassy script with all manner of amusing supporting players, including a wiseacre butler and his fashion victim sister, the Prime Minister's cute-but-dumb squeaky voiced daughter and sundry swains.

        Probably what's most significant about The King Stag is that it was born in regional theater (American Repertory in Cambridge, Mass.) in the mid-1980s.

        You marvel at the vision and boldness and wish that so much American theater hadn't retreated into stoic realism, that more theater artists in developing companies, especially outside the largest metropolitan areas, could be trained in multi-disciplines, could be risk-takers and dreamers.

        There is something else significant about The King Stag's regional theater origin. For allthe play's transforming magic, what it can't transform is the cavernous size of the Procter & Gamble stage and auditorium.

        What can thrill in a smaller theater was overwhelmed by the Aronoff hall's size and distancing. Cincinnati really does need the Emery Theater back in business.

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