A ‘Pinocchio’ that owes more to Kabuki than Disney

By Joel Brown; Globe Correspondent, January 29, 2015

A Kabuki-influenced version of “Pinocchio” may strike some as the sort of theatrical experiment best suited to an avant-garde troupe performing in a dimly lit basement. But Wendy Lement and Steven Bogart are putting it on the big stage at Wheelock Family Theatre beginning Saturday. They promise all the laughs and tugged heartstrings traditional to the tale of the wooden puppet who wants to become a real boy, along with some new shading.

“When we went back to the original story, I was startled at how funny it is,” says Lement, Wheelock’s producer and co-artistic director. “It’s both hysterically funny and very dark in places, and both of those are combined in Kabuki.”

Kabuki is a highly stylized form of traditional Japanese drama involving singing, dancing, and elaborate costumes and makeup. With performances through Feb. 22 at Wheelock, this “Pinocchio” is a world premiere version of the story of the mischievous creation of the poor puppeteer Geppetto.

Lement joined Wheelock in 2012, and this is only the second season that she has programmed herself. She had known Bogart since they were both students at Emerson in the 1980s and thought of him as she looked to bring new creative voices to Wheelock.

Bogart is known both for working with young people and for his restless creativity. After 22 years as a Lexington High School drama teacher, he’s been building his name as a playwright and director around the city. He helmed a memorable “Cabaret” for the American Repertory Theater, with his former student Amanda Palmer as the Emcee. Next up, he’ll direct the New England premiere of “Shockheaded Peter” for Company One, featuring the “steamcrunk” band Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys.

“I floated the idea of doing a ‘Pinocchio’ that he would direct,” Lement says, “and also the idea of setting it in a non-Western culture. That has to do very much with the mission of the theater — of nontraditional casting, but also exposing the audience to theater of different cultures.”

But if it was not set in Pinocchio’s native Italy, then where? Soon she and Bogart discovered their mutual experience with Japanese theater. Lement had directed a couple of Kabuki-influenced shows. Bogart lived in Japan for six months in his 20s, had a Japanese painting teacher here for many years, and even spoke the language, although he says he’s no longer fluent.

They saw how masks and transformations were common to Japanese theater and “Pinocchio,” the 1880s novel by Carlo Collodi that spawned countless adaptations, including Disney’s classic animated film.

“We’re not Kabuki experts, we’re not doing pure, traditional Kabuki,” Bogart says. “We’re Kabuki influenced, Noh influenced, even Butoh theater-influenced, pulling all of these elements in to create the story.”

So audiences will face a stage backed by sliding screens, not unlike those in a traditional Japanese-style home, that here can be moved to change the scene. Movement and dance and masks will echo Japanese styles. The band on an upper deck of the set will include a skilled player of the shamisen, a traditional three-stringed Japanese instrument. And as for the marine creature in whose belly Pinocchio ends up . . .

“In the novel, the whale is not a whale, it’s a dogfish. I don’t know how big a dogfish is, but the Disney version turned it into a whale,” Bogart says. “We did some research and found a character, Namazu, in Japanese mythology, which is a giant catfish. It’s so big, it’s controlled by a god, and when the god is not paying attention, Namazu creates earthquakes and tsunamis.”

Big enough, then, to swallow a puppet and puppetmaster. But this “Pinocchio” isn’t just about tradition. “We looked at Pinocchio and all of the temptations that pull him away from family, from Geppetto, that get him into trouble — and we looked at them as modern-day Tokyo,” Lement says.

Consider their Playland — known as The Land of Toys in the novel, Pleasure Island in the Disney film — where kids turn into donkeys because they’re playing all day. “We looked at what they would be playing all day long in Japan, so that years could go by in a sense, and Steve came up with the idea of pachinko” — a kind of vertical pinball game that originated in Japan.

“Japan is this amazing place of the old and new living together,” Bogart says. “Modern Japan is all this crazy, city, neon, fast-paced life, but then there are these gorgeous pagodas and temples that crop up everywhere,” and that mix is what they’re trying to capture.

The cast includes 17-year-old Sirena Abalian as Pinocchio and veteran Boston actor Steven Barkhimer as Geppetto, with music composed and conducted by Mary Bichner and sets by Cristina Todesco.

Abalian starred in Wheelock’s 2013 production of “Pippi Longstocking,” and Lement says she brings high energy and comic timing to the role of Pinocchio. Many actors, including boys, auditioned for the part, but Bogart and Lement kept coming back to Abalian. (The actress is a Lexington student, but she and Bogart never overlapped there.)

Bogart and Lement collaborated on the script. “Steve would come to me occasionally and say, ‘Is this too weird?’ And I’d say, ‘No, I love it.’ And then I’d go to him and say, ‘Is this too out there?’ And he’d say, ‘No!’ We’re sort of on the same page.”

They moved away from Disney moods to get at the underlying ideas of Collodi’s novel, which also fit well with the Japanese motif, such as the Blue Fairy that crops up in various guises throughout the show and serves as Pinocchio’s conscience. That doesn’t mean their version isn’t animated in its own way.

Lement: “The Blue Fairy is Geppetto’s wife who has died at the beginning. He is mourning her loss in front of a tree at her grave — the tree is there, and she is the tree. He’s feeling sorry for himself, and she takes a part of herself, a branch, and it goes flying into him, and she says, ‘Do something with your life!’ ”

Bogart: “He ignores that and the log starts jumping up and hitting him. ‘Do something!’ And it becomes Pinocchio’s voice, and he makes Pinocchio out of that log.”

"Wheelock’s ‘Mountain’ a vivid adaptation" -states the Boston Globe!

The Boston Globe: Friday April 18

Wheelock’s ‘Mountain’ a vivid adaptation

By Terry Byrne

Grace Lin’s captivating “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” is a potent blend of fantasy, Chinese folklore, and heroic adventure. On the Wheelock Family Theatre stage, the book’s theatrical adaptation combines vivid imagery with simple storytelling for an enchanting journey from Fruitless Mountain to the village of Bright Moonlight and back again.

Lin’s chapter book, which is geared to readers ages 8 to 12, weaves multiple traditional Chinese themes and characters into the main story line, which focuses on young Minli (Caroline Workman) and her quest to improve her family’s fortune. While managing all of the stories might create staging challenges, director Jane Staab and her production team make some very low-tech choices that have a powerful dramatic impact.

Choreographer Laurel Conrad and costume designer Melissa Miller collaborate on particularly winning costumes and movement that suggest the wind and rain and a silvery and graceful Old Man of the Moon, not to mention a greedy pack of monkeys.

Adapter Jeannine Coulombe uses selective narration to link the different stories, and Staab takes advantage of the opportunity to position various members of her ensemble in different areas of the stage to deliver key transitions and bits of exposition. The effect is one of constant movement, making it easy for the audience to follow Minli from her desperately poor home to the sky where the Jade Dragon and her children control the rain.

At the heart of “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” is the power of storytelling. The play opens with children gathering around a storyteller, asking for the chance to play different roles in the tales. The storyteller soon morphs into Minli’s father, Ba (Michael Tow), whose tales feed Minli’s imagination even when there’s little rice to feed the family.

Minli’s Ma (Grace Napier) scoffs at Ba’s impractical stories and bemoans the family’s lack of money, inspiring Minli to spend one of the only two coins she has on a goldfish the seller promises will bring good fortune.

Following the fish’s instructions, Minli heads out on a quest to find the Old Man of the Moon who knows the secret of good fortune and ties everyone’s destiny together with string. Along the way, Minli meets a variety of characters, including an orphan boy (Sebastian Wood), a vindictive Magistrate Tiger (Bill Mootos), and most importantly, a flightless dragon (Stewart Evan Smith) who becomes Minli’s ally and best friend.

While the collection of folk tales spans time and space, and the parade of characters can feel a bit confusing at times, especially for the younger audience members, Workman and Smith’s chemistry helps to keep the audience focused. As the flightless dragon, Smith is endlessly enthusiastic, giggling with delight at whatever he and Minli encounter, and the friendship between the young girl and the dragon unfolds naturally and believably.

Matthew T. Lazure’s tiered moonlit set and Dewey Dellay’s atmospheric music help make the many transitions easy to follow.

While the book focused primarily on Minli’s quest, the stage adaptation opens up to the many people whose lives Minli touches. “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” celebrates the importance of family, from Ma and Ba to the larger communities Minli encounters.

Terry Byrne can be reached at trbyrne@aol.com.

Caroline Workman as Minli and Stewart Evan Smith as the flightless dragon in “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” at Wheelock Family Theatre.

 

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon in the Boston Globe

In ‘Mountain,’ a girl’s quest, and an author’s

By Joel Brown  Globe Correspondent   April 10, 2014

 

As a girl in upstate New York, Grace Lin rejected her Chinese heritage.

“There were no other Asian or minority families that lived in the area,” says Lin, whose parents emigrated from Taiwan. “I kind of decided early on that I was just going to pretend that I wasn’t Chinese. I was going to pretend that I was Caucasian, like everybody was in my class. I did such a good job of that that I really did forget most of the time that I was Chinese. I used to walk down the street and see my reflection in a store window and be like, ‘Oh, there’s a Chinese girl. Wait, that’s me.’ ”

Growing up in Cambridge years later, Caroline Workman embraced her own mother’s Chinese heritage. And one of her favorite books was “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon,” a novel for young readers based on Chinese folk tales, written and illustrated . . . by Grace Lin.

It all comes full circle beginning Friday, when Workman, 14, stars in a stage adaptation of “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” at Wheelock Family Theatre, a New England premiere that runs through May 11.

“I loved the story, and I was so excited to see what it would look like onstage, whether I was in it or not,” says Workman.

Lin will spend much of this weekend at Wheelock, where she will receive the Wheel Award for commitment to children and families and changing lives through art. “It’s a really neat thing,” says Lin, who counts 15 books in print that she both wrote and illustrated, “because you spend so much time alone in your studio or your writing room, and you kind of put your work out into the universe and you don’t really know if it goes anywhere.

“And then to know there’s a whole production being made of something that came from nothing, that just came from your imagination, is a really cool feeling,” says Lin, who moved from Somerville to Northampton last year.

The book and play tell the story of a girl named Minli (played by Workman) who, inspired by her father’s folk tales, sets off on an adventure-filled quest to find the Old Man of the Moon and ask him how she can change her family’s fortunes.

“What she learns on the journey is: The good fortune we seek to begin with isn’t the good fortune we find, but we do find what really matters,” says director Jane Staab.

“I love that Minli is so kind and so smart,” says Workman. “She puts the puzzle pieces together, and she thinks of what to do to go over an obstacle. She’s so quick-witted.”

Lin says she used to get angry when her parents tried to teach her about Chinese culture “because I felt like all they were trying to do was remind me how different I was from my classmates.” But eventually she changed her mind, and “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” in part resulted from one of her mother’s early efforts to connect her to her roots.

“One day she went out and got about six to 12 Chinese fairy tale books that had been translated to English, and she put them on the bookshelf in the living room and just left them there. She knew if she gave them to me I’d get mad.

“She was really smart. I did end up reading every single one of them,” Lin says. “But I remember feeling like these books weren’t that great. The translation was kind of rough, there wasn’t a lot of detail, everything was kind of flat, and the illustrations were really kind of crude. I think it kind of reinforced the idea that my Asian heritage was kind of inferior to these Western things, like ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Cinderella.’ ”

Many years later, she regretted not knowing more about her heritage and spent a lot of time trying to recapture what she had missed, including travels to China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. “All of a sudden those fairy tales came back to me. I’d see them in the landscape around me.”

She started making up her own stories about them, and “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon,” published in 2009, was the end result. Workman and her mother attended Lin book signings, and a print of Lin’s art hangs in Workman’s room.

“Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” will be Staab’s last show at Wheelock, at least for a while. After 33 years at the theater, as cofounder, casting director, business manager and artistic director, she is retiring in June. Going forward, the theater will be run by producer Wendy Lement and assistant producer Shelley Bolman, who have been in their jobs since Staab’s cofounder Susan Kosoff retired in 2012.

“There’s no particular reason, it’s just I turned 70, you know?” says Staab. “But I don’t believe I’m done with the creative side of my life. I sure hope not.”

Workman is a busy young actor and dancer whose resume includes a stint in “Billy Elliot” on Broadway. She says she’s excited to work once again with Staab, who also acted in or directed the other three shows she’s been in at Wheelock.

“Caroline is a special talent. We’ve seen her grow up in this theater,” Staab says. “I think we’ve brought her and her acting to a place she can be thrilled with.”

To this day, Lin says, she doesn’t speak Chinese well and cannot write it. Workman, though, is excited for next fall when she’ll be a freshman at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where one of her classes will be Mandarin Chinese.

Joel Brown can be reached at jbnbpt@gmail.com.

BOSTON GLOBE "ensemble turns Hairspray into a dance party"

An irresistible score combined with an outstanding cast make the Wheelock Family Theatre’s production of “Hairspray” a highlight of the theater season.

Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman’s musical adaptation of John Waters’s 1988 movie celebrates individuality in all its glorious forms. Shaiman’s rock score references just the right musical themes from the 1950s and ’60s while making fresh new songs that serve the musical theater storytelling format. Wittman’s lyrics are hilarious, working period-specific pop culture references into rhymes that also move the story along and develop this quirky crowd of characters.

And what a crowd they are. Director Susan Kosoff and musical director Matthew Stern have cast the show with a healthy mix of familiar faces and new talent to populate Baltimore circa 1962, and every performer seems to be inspiring the others to up their game. No fewer than three dozen performers sing, dance, and act up a storm on the Janie E. Howland’s brightly colored ’60s-style variety show set, and thanks to Kosoff’s direction and Laurel Conrad’s sleek choreography, these dancers make it look easy. Stern conducts a tight, six-piece band through the high-energy score with joyful ease.

Jenna Lea Scott (who was so good in last year’s Lyric Stage production of “Avenue Q”) delivers a Tracy Turnblad with the perfect combination of effervescence and sincerity without being cloying. Her Tracy, a big girl with even bigger hair, is as believable when she swoons over heartthrob Link Larkin as she is when she resolves to be judged for her dancing talent, not her plus size, on “The Corny Collins Show.” The earnest, unaffected way Scott turns Tracy’s demotion to special ed into an opportunity to make new friends, and learn some slick new dance moves, wins the audience’s hearts, to say nothing of her performance of “Good Morning, Baltimore” and “I Can Hear the Bells.”

Scott’s Tracy also has a warm relationship with her parents Edna (Robert Saoud) and Wilbur (Peter A. Carey), as well as her best friend Penny Pingleton (an outstanding Jennifer Beth Glick), which gives “Mama I’m a Big Girl Now” and “Welcome to the ’60s” a lot of heart — to say nothing of the soulful sound from the trio of Dynamites (Maritza Bostic, Ciera-Dawn Washington, and Kerri Wilson-Ellenberger).

Boston Conservatory student Michael Notardonato makes Link Larkin the perfect teen idol (with a killer falsetto), whose “It Takes Two” is the first of several show-stoppers. Despite his pop icon aspirations, his Link is grounded enough to fall for the no-nonsense Tracy, despite his role as arm-candy for Amber Von Tussle (Jane Bernhard), daughter of “The Corny Collins Show” producer Velma Von Tussle (Aimee Doherty).

Doherty has never sounded better (and that’s saying something), but she also makes the scheming Velma Von Tussle a charming villainess, and her castanet-like choreography for her “Miss Baltimore Crabs” nearly brings down the house.

There is not one weak link in this ensemble, so it seems almost unfair to single out performers, but Gamalia Pharms, a Wheelock regular, is inspired as Motormouth Maybelle, Jon Allen is a seductively loose-limbed Seaweed, Tyla Collier grabs our attention with her Little Inez, Cheryl McMahon is pitch perfect in multiple roles, and Mark Linehan is an appropriately slick Corny Collins.

“Hairspray” takes on some big issues, but does it with so much humor and optimism it will send you out of the theater singing and dancing for joy.

Review by Terry Byrne.
Photo by Gary Ng.
Jenna Lea Scott, Jon Allen.

Boston Globe finds "Heart" in "Oliver!"

The Boston Globe
January 28, 2013

Wheelock’s ‘Oliver!’ steals hearts

Charles Dickens’s bleak tale of a desperate orphan boy in 19th century London hardly seems like inspiring musical theater fare. And yet, what makes the musical “Oliver!” so uplifting is composer Lionel Bart’s emphasis on embracing life, no matter how small its pleasures. The Wheelock Family Theatre’s production of “Oliver!” finds Dickens’s sense of hope and love in the midst of degradation and despair and energizes the story with a terrific vocal ensemble of both children and adults.

In the title role, sixth-grader Charlie Clinton displays an angelic voice with a demeanor to match. His unadorned renditions of both “Where Is Love?” and “Who Will Buy?” create that delicate balance of utter loneliness and hope that fuels the emotional tone of this musical.

Clinton also has the support of every member of the cast of more than 40. From the moment the workhouse orphans march in to get their bowl of gruel singing “Food, Glorious Food” to the final moment of redemption, director Susan Kosoff and her production team attend to every detail.

Matthew T. Lazure’s adaptation of Anthony Hancock’s design is superb: A multi-level set is gray and cobblestoned, with bridges and arches suggesting the dark alleys of London complete with a bit of fog hanging over everything. With the simple addition of a table and chairs, each of the areas becomes an orphanage, a funeral parlor, a pub, or a pickpockets’ lair, with the help of Franklin Meissner Jr.’s lighting. Kosoff uses every inch of the set, creating a sense of movement to a variety of London scenes without slowing the action down for a second. Laurel Conrad’s choreography accents and amplifies important moments without becoming distracting.

Kosoff and musical director Jon Goldberg have also found some impressive talent for key roles. Brittany Rolfs has a truly stunning voice, and gives the saloon gal Nancy a rough edge that makes her willingness to risk everything for Oliver much more poignant. The emotional range Rolfs displays between “It’s a Fine Life” and “As Long as He Needs Me” offers another opportunity for Kosoff to walk that line between hope and despair.

Kosoff casts against type with Jane Staab playing Fagin, the leader of a band of young pickpockets Oliver falls in with. Staab underplays a role that often turns into caricature, and finds more pathos than expected in Fagin’s fear of growing old. Her version of “Reviewing the Situation” starts out humorously, but becomes a little fearful, even desperate. Staab’s choice to play Fagin as a woman passing as a man isn’t jarring, but doesn’t really add much to the story or the character.

But nothing in this production disappoints, with the performances driving everything, especially Jeffrey Sewell as a charming Artful Dodger, Timothy John Smith as an absolutely terrifying Bill Sikes, and the ensemble in “Who Will Buy?” practically stopping the show with their delicious harmonies.

Goldberg’s six-piece orchestra provides the perfect accompaniment for the singing actors, sending the audience out of the theater on a wonderfully upbeat note.

Terry Byrne can be reached at trbyrne@aol.com.

The Globe attends ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

“Anne of Green Gables,” the story of an orphan girl adopted by an aging brother and sister on idyllic Prince Edward Island, has been charming readers since it was first published in 1908. The book has sold more than 50 million copies, and has been adapted several times for film, television and the stage. This musical version of the story now at Wheelock Family Theatre is the one that has been performed in Charlottetown in the Canadian island province every summer since 1965, and while the story may be timeless, this musical feels dated.

Despite some terrific ensemble work and a feisty performance by Jennifer Beth Glick in the title role, Norman Campbell’s score is melodically limited, so few of the songs stand out. The story line follows Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novel, but the approach is superficial, as if we’re getting a selection of unrelated highlights: Anne’s temper gets her in trouble; Anne accidentally gets her friend drunk on homemade wine; Anne worries that she’s ugly and dyes her hair. The incidents all appear in the novel, but they aren’t presented here with any dramatic tension or sense that we are on a journey with these characters.

Glick does a terrific job illustrating Anne’s oversize imagination and forthright manner in the song “Gee I’m Glad I’m No One Else But Me.” She gets lots of support from Anne’s best friend, Diana Barry (Jenna Lea Scott), even though their duet, “Kindred Spirits,” sounds like a weak knockoff of any number of Jerry Herman songs (think “Mame,” or “Hello, Dolly!”). Also, Anne’s love-hate relationship with Gilbert Blythe (Bradley Jensen) and his jealous girlfriend, Josie (Kaitee Tredway), becomes the focus of the story, distracting attention from Anne’s relationship with her adopted family, Matthew Cuthbert (Robert Saoud) and his sister Marilla (Jacqui Parker).

Saoud does a lovely turn as the quiet, gentle Matthew and even though the lyrics to his ballad, “The Words,” are soppy with sentiment, Saoud’s direct delivery finds some sincerity there. Parker is also strong as the stern Marilla, whose disappointment about receiving a girl orphan rather than the boy she and Matthew requested, slowly turns to affection.

The musical’s best moments come in the production numbers featuring the children in the cast. Choreographer Laurel Conrad has devised combinations that highlight the talents of the Wheelock ensemble, particularly “Where Did the Summer Go To?” and the “Pageant Song.” But director Jane Staab is overly fond of parading the cast up and down the aisles, which slows the action down and pulls the audience out of the story.

At intermission, Emma Harris, 7, of Milton said she was enjoying it, but wasn’t quite sure how it would all turn out. But she confided, “I think Gilbert and Anne are going to like each other.” There’s nothing wrong with that, but by taking the focus off Anne’s indomitable spirit, we lose Montgomery’s theme of a young girl’s struggle to find a balance between her imagination and social expectations.

-Terry Byrne

Great Review in Boston Globe!

Mermaid moves along swimmingly... by Terry Byrne, Boston Globe 20 April 2010

Sharks, jellyfish, eels, and other assorted schools of fish swim freely about in the Wheelock Family Theatre’s beautifully realized production of “The Little Mermaid.’’

Director and designer James P. Byrne taps the talents of every member of his design team to suggest an underwater atmosphere with the simplest touches: huge swaths of translucent turquoise cloth represent waves; Stacey Stephens’s clever costumes bring crabs, eels, and mermaids to life; Karen Perlow’s shimmering lighting creates murky underwater scenes while bright, clear colors indicate the world on land; choreographer Kristen Richnavsky’s fluid movements make us believe the merpeople are floating or swimming about; and J. Hagenbuckle’s musical motifs provide punctuation for the storm, playful splashing, and eerie, deep sea sounds.

Even with all these rich, evocative elements, don’t go expecting Disney’s musical version, with Sebastian the crab and a redheaded mermaid named Ariel. For this adaptation, playwright Linda Daugherty returns to Hans Christian Andersen’s original story, adds more plot twists, and places more emphasis on the struggle between good and evil and the sacrifices that must be made for good to prevail. Perhaps as a nod toDisney or recognition of the vocal talents of award-winning actress Andrea Ross, who plays Pearl, the Little Mermaid, Wheelock cofounder Jane Staab wrote “Pearl’s Song,’’ which expresses the mermaid’s longing for the land at the top of the show and at the end. Ross has a beautiful voice, and although I confess I wished we could hear her sing “Part of Your World,’’ the simplicity and sincerity of her performance is charming. Ross also makes Pearl’s struggle to communicate — without the voice she gave up in exchange for legs — believable without resorting to mugging or bad pantomime.

Daugherty captures the mermaid’s love for the human Prince Stefan (David Kaim) and the price she must pay to pursue her love and walk on the land. Unfortunately, she also gets bogged down in scenes devoted to unnecessary exposition and a heavy-handed moral about ecology and the balance of life. Her script touches all the high points of the story, but with little insight into her characters and a penchant for cliches: “Can we ever understand anything we have not lived ourselves?’’ is one line we hear more than once, but it never feels connected to any real emotion.

Byrne (no relation to this reporter) keeps the action moving swiftly between the land and the sea and has wisely cast an ensemble of first-rate actors who rise above Daugherty’s tangled net of words. Margaret Ann Brady nearly steals the show as the Sea Witch, who sent the little boy in front of me cowering with her fearsome threats and the crowd of creepy eels surrounding her, and then had him howling with laughter as she sang the songs of the whales. Johnny Lee Davenport, best known for his performances in Shakespearean plays, is a noble Sea King and caring father, and Ricardo Engermann keeps the comic elements sharp with some terrific slapstick and pratfalls.

It’s hard to compete with the Disney version, but the Wheelock Family Theatre’s “The Little Mermaid’’ rises above the limitations of the script for a production that delivers a convincing undersea adventure.

ERTE MERMAID

WFT Alum in Boston GLobe: 26 January 2010

Check out the Boston Globe today! WFT's dear friend and alum, Julia Jones, has a role in the upcoming TWILIGHT saga film as the female "wolf" in the pack. Congrats Julia!

Globe Review by Terry Byrne

‘A Tale’ that packs too much into the telling

Charles Dickens’s sweeping saga “A Tale of Two Cities’’ encompasses a wide swath of history and culture to illustrate “the best of times’’ and “the worst of times’’ in London and Paris at the end of the 18th century. But condensing all the conflicts into a two-hour stage version requires some difficult choices, which adapter Dwayne Hartford is unwilling to make. The result is a Wheelock Family Theatre production that is well-intentioned, but dramatically weak. Hartford’s script feels like a Cliffs Notes version of the novel, with all the major scenes included, but with very little connection or coherence.

At the heart of Dickens’s story is the love between Lucie Manette (Robin Eldridge) and Charles Darnay (Paul Melendy), both from families at different ends of the political spectrum, who find each other and fall in love despite their complicated histories. The episodic nature of the tale - it was first published in weekly installments - allowed Dickens to play out various story lines and develop innumerable characters as he traced the days leading up to and after the French revolution. But explaining who all these characters are, and how they fit together, will make your head spin.

In an effort to pull the stories together, Hartford makes the character of Sydney Carton (the outstanding Bill Mootos) the narrator. This could work, since in the novel, the dissolute lawyer Carton is relegated to the sidelines and watches as the woman he loves, Lucie, gives her heart to another. This narrator also has the opportunity to create much-needed transitions from one city to another. But Hartford’s use of the narrator is inconsistent, and he’s never there when we need him.

Director Susan Kosoff does a good job moving her company around Anita Fuchs’s minimalist set, but she can’t figure out how to keep the production moving and too often relies on tableaus that stop the action cold. Fuchs’s framing device of broken pieces of wood misses the opportunity to provide two distinct settings, so we never know exactly where we are.

Despite his often long-winded descriptions (Dickens was paid by the word), the novel includes some terrific characters, including Carton, who makes the ultimate sacrifice for love, Miss Pross, Lucie’s governess, and Madame Defarge, who knits the injustices of the time into a long scarf. M. Lynda Robinson gives Miss Pross just the right combination of spunk and loyalty, while Jane Staab, as Madame Defarge, heads into madness too quickly, not allowing the audience to understand the grief that sent her over the edge. Their battle near the end of the story, however, is wonderfully choreographed, so that what could have been a simple cat fight becomes an epic struggle between good and evil.

“A Tale of Two Cities’’ has some terrific dramatic potential, but Hartford gets bogged down in his effort to be true to all the themes Dickens included. The unintended consequence in this production is that if you haven’t read the book, even the best of times depicted here are just confusing.