The Kids Are Alright

It saddens me to open this blog and note from the posting dates that I failed to post reviews from the past few seasons at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Bad Jonathan, bad!

But then I thought for a moment and realized that for two of those years I was head writer for Lamplighters Music Theater Company's Gala Committee and had been writing the book for a full-length musical on deadline during my Ashland vacations.

OK ... not so bad, Jonathan, not so bad! So let's get started (again).

The first play of the 2014 Season was a romp through space and time involving mysterious alien creatures, a planet ruled by a totalitarian super-intelligence, three intrepid children, and a mysterious doctor. But before you pull out your sonic screwdriver and start looking for the TARDIS, this was not a staged adventure of "Doctor Who." Rather it was an adaptation of the 1962 children's novel "A Wrinkle in Time," by Madeleine L'Engle.

I must confess that I tried to read this book when I was in school, but it never grabbed me. I had friends who recommended it as a must-read, and teachers/librarians who lauded it as great summer fare. I recall the story as being too frank about the life of a pre-teen for my tastes; and the religious elements may have been a turn-off at that age. All I know is the emotions were too raw for me, so I put it down and never finished it. I really didn't break out into rabid reading mode until I discovered fantasy novels like "The Book of Three" and "The Lord of the Rings" a few grades later.  So I basically missed the "Wrinkle" experience. But I knew it was out there.

The challenges of mounting a theatrical version of this novel must have been daunting to the creative team that brought it to the stage of the Angus Bowmer Theater. And frankly, it was the way in which they solved those challenges that charmed me the most.

I have always had a soft spot for so-called "story theater." I love the "meta" element in meta-theatrical productions: Divvy up the narration among all the players; use an ordinary looking prop to represent an extraordinary thing; mix and match the actors so that one minute she's your mother, and the next she's a kid at school; and most of all, the set should become many places through the course of the play ... from the family kitchen, to a haunted house, to an alien world.

It was this choice by director Tracy Young and her team of designers that set the bar high enough to overcome the somewhat simplistic nature of this essential children's story and draw this adult into the tale. The set was dominated by a large facade upon which projections were splashed of everything from a storm-tossed tree covering an eerily close full moon to planetary systems unseen by man ... but surely pictured vividly by a generation of children. The use of onstage cameras to project the viewpoint of given characters was also very effective, especially when our middle-school-aged heroine, Meg Murry, lies immobilized on the ground while her father and friend look down on her helplessly.

This is not to say that the actors didn't contribute to the wonder of the evening. On the contrary, the performances of the three children -- pre-teen Meg (played amazingly by twenty-something actress Alejandra Escalante); her younger savant brother, Charles Wallace (a very convincing Sara Bruner); and new friend Calvin (Joe Wegner) -- were crucial to the success of the play. Their missing father (the always amazing Dan Donohue) was particularly well crafted, as was Ashland favorite Judith-Marie Bergen's larger-than-life take on the odd Mrs. Whatsit. Her fellow time-traveling companions - Michele Mais and Kate Mulligan - were a mixed bag. Mais was hard to hear, but seemed to have a grasp on the Shakespeare-quoting Mrs. Who, though she was limited by her technique; Mulligan fared much better providing the disembodied voice of Mrs. Which, as well as a loopy character known as "The Happy Medium."

Frankly, it was at this point that my mind wandered because of undeniable similarities to a children's novel that *did* catch my fancy at that age (or a little younger): "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster .. with its "whiches" (as opposed to "witches") and its Watchdog (who had an actual watch in his body). The literalist in me was probably born way back then. But I digress ...

The work of the Ensemble was key to the show, particularly in creating an array of elaborate creatures with ordinary props, from bedsheets to mink coats to umbrellas. Take the bedsheets for example; they were used at various times to represent the walls of an elevator, the wings of a miraculous moth-like creature, and the chambers of a gigantic beating heart. Of particular note was the excellent puppetry provided by the versatile Mark Bedard, who operated an eerie ventriloquist dummy that (SPOILER ALERT) ends up playing a key part in the action. And I cannot forget the ever-malleable U. Jonathan Toppo, whose turn as the aptly named (for a Shakespeare festival) family dog, Fortinbras, was a high point - right down to his wagging tail ... which I still can't figure out technically.

At a brisk hour and a half, with no intermission, this was a breezy tour de force evening about love, hope, and the ultimate power of a child's faith and intelligence. I did feel strangely distant from the emotional content - which is a bit odd, as the relationship between a lost father and a found daughter is traditionally right up my alley - but I'm not going to complain about that because the structure and conceptual elegance of the project were well worth the price of admission.

Indeed, I felt like I took a quick jaunt around the universe in 90 minutes via "tesseract" -- L'Engle's wormhole-like method of traveling immense stellar distances -- and was back in my seat in no time.

Rather exhilarating, really.

Now where did I park that blue box ...