The stories all explore themes of innocence and cruelty, loss and belonging, through the distorted prism of Cape Town in the apartheid period.
The themes of innocence and sin percolate in Mr. Gomes's century-straddling, stylistically heterogeneous narrative, but he is interestingly sly about how they are distributed between past and present.
Britten visited the Far East in 1956 and the following year set to music Arthur Waley's translations of ancient Chinese poems, texts that explore typical Brittenesque themes of innocence, loss and regret.
But these cagey, obsessive songs on the good old themes of innocence and experience can grow on you wickedly, and some of the grooves, whether electronic or live band, are deep enough to roast a pig in.
Salvesen organized the show by theme with one room dedicated to death and the afterlife, and others on the subjects of magic, horror, occultism and monsters, with the show ending, the way Hollywood movies often do, on themes of innocence and redemption.
His invocation of his literary heroes is a joy: he calls on William Blake (who flashes the twin themes of innocence and experience), T. S. Eliot (who signals the bleak moments), and that mini-poster boy DeLillo (for whom Curtis and Camilla share a passion that's something of an aesthetic mystery, given Birnbaum's own narrative predilections).
The music's reverent, psychedelic overtones evoke their themes of innocence and spirituality.
The latter's 2.5D tale reeks of Calvin and Hobbes' savory influence, captivating themes of innocence and imagination through the eyes of a child, as multi-instrumentalist Kaoru Ishibashi croons and strums his bittersweet notes.
But the more common theme, that of innocence lost, was voiced by Erwin L. Epple, 54, and his wife, Fumiyo, 64, who were in Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, and saw the smoke rising from the Pentagon.
The theme of imperiled innocence was also found in the attractively mounted Malaysian film Sham moh (At the End of Daybreak; Ho Yuhang).
