Bostonist had the opportunity to attend the ART's stage adaptation of "Wings of Desire" this week. We're a little embarrassed to admit that we haven't seen the film, so we won't be offering any comparisons.

We've come to expect great things from the ART's stage design, and so it was a bit of a disappointment when the curtain rose on an essentially barren stage. Aside from some shafts of light illuminating falling sand (a beautiful and inspired metaphor for, well, something) there was little on stage but a few plastic chairs and a snack stand. Was this an artistic decision to highlight the spareness of the dialogue and the mood of disaffection? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was the art director's way of lowering our expectations in advance of disappointments to come.

The show ostensibly centers around the plight of an angel who desperately longs to be human, but the real highlight of the performance was the aerial acrobatics of Mam Smith. For about one-third of the play, Smith performs suspended by a long white sheet. She appears far more angelic than the "real" angels, as she swings and twists in midair swathed in white undulating fabric. We would have been quite content to simply watch Ms. Smith for the entire show, but sadly the rest of the play kept interrupting.

Interfering with our enjoyment of Smith's performance was the play itself. This was a disjointed series of vignettes set alternately in Germany and Boston. The characters speak of postwar Germany with heavy accents, but they are surrounded by bizarre local references, such as Robin Young's news readings and frequent boston trivia. (As an aside, we wonder when it became ethically OK for a news personality to appear in a fictional drama as herself, reading the news?) Periodically we would be treated to singing, violin pieces or voiceovers from the multitalented Hadewych Minis, but aside from these short oases the non-acrobatic vignettes were generally confusing or dull.

Despite all of this, the performance mysteriously received a standing ovation from the crowd. Our guess is that it was really an appreciation of Ms. Smith, but crowds can be fickle. For our parts, we would rather see Wim Wenders' version, or perhaps Cirque du Soleil...