Puppet adds poetry to off-Broadway show ‘The Oldest Boy’

It’s a parent’s worst nightmare — to have a child taken away. Yet the American mom in The Oldest Boy is kind of OK with the situation, once she’s past her initial shock. After all, her 3-year-old, Tenzin, wasn’t abducted by predators but whisked by monks to a Buddhist monastery in India. They asked nicely, too. The monks (Jon Norman Schneider and James Satto) want to raise the child because they believe he’s the reincarnation of a dead lama. “No, not like the animal,” his unnamed mother (Celia Keenan-Bolger) tells her mom. “It means teacher.” The woman’s Tibetan husband (James Yaegashi) doesn’t bat an eye when told of his son’s true nature. It’s harder on her. An American and a lapsed Catholic, she’s studying to become a Buddhist but, still, this is a jump into the deep end of the pool. Playwright Sarah Ruhl has incorporated magical realism in past shows such as Dead Man’s Cell Phone and Eurydice, so it’s not surprising the new one shares that vibe as well.