Tag Archives: children’s theatre

HONK! if you love family musicals

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The Ugly Duckling is the Hans Christian Anderson tale of a misfit chick raised by ducks and made to feel inferior for being different, who then matures into a graceful beautiful swan and is welcomed by a flock of other swans.  Stories of happy resolution and appreciation for young people who don’t fit in have always been in demand, although the expectations of the story tropes have changed even within my memory, as, for example, some modern viewers find the bullying in the 1960s television special “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to be egregiously cruel, even with some happier resolutions at the end for the red-nosed reindeer, the dentist elf, the kind abominable snow monster, and other picked-on characters.

Honk! is a musical version of the story, with music by George Stiles and book and lyrics by Anthony Drewe, which debuted in England in 2003.  And I liked this version better than previous versions I’d encountered, partly because the audience and the ugly duckling (played here by Mathew Bittroff, appropriately awkward in mismatched socks and lopsided stance) could see right from the start that the mother duck (Kayla Nickel) cared about him and admired his unusually good swimming ability, and because even when he was lost, the device of overhearing a television appeal let him see that his mother still loved him and hadn’t given up.  During the performance I got wondering whether the happy ending would still have him flying off with the flock of swans, as in the original, and I was relieved to see that after he’s both discovered himself as a swan and found his duck family, he decides to stay on the lake with the ducks and with his swan sweetie Penny (Paula Humby).  It was also nice that after some initial jokes about Drake avoiding family responsibilities and not bonding with Ugly, he stays home to take care of the ducklings and the nest while his partner Ida goes searching for Ugly, and is happy to have him return.

This version of the story has an obvious villain outside of the sibling/community bullying: a Cat, played with feline grace and predatory instincts by David Johnston of The 11 O’Clock Number and Two One-Way Tickets’ The Full Monty.  A young audience member behind me was complaining with satisfaction at intermission that he or she Didn’t Like That Cat.   I found the analogy with human would-be predators equally disturbing.  The way that the Cat concentrated on the youth who was distanced from his family and discouraged him from checking in with his mother was very similar to the grooming and luring behaviour of a child molester portrayed by Jake Tkaczyk in his original piece Play Date at Red Deer College a few weeks ago.

Johnston’s feline mannerisms were readily identifiable and very funny, particularly the way he shot his claws and caressed his astonishing facial hair.  Elisa Benzer as Turkey, and Will Mitchell as Drake and Bulldog were also particularly impressive in capturing the essence of their characters’ species in posture and movement.

In the musical, once Ugly has been separated from his family and farmyard community by the Cat and after he escapes the cat, he spends a long time searching for home and encountering various other characters – a military formation of migratory geese, a couple of domesticated pets, a bullfrog and his chorus, and a mother and daughter swan – before being found by his mother and discovered to have molted into a recognizable swan.  This gave the story more structure, and also provided opportunities for some funny characters, puns, and song/dance numbers.   Most of the cast played two or three parts.  The duckling siblings were Laena Anderson, Rachel Kent, and Lindsay Phillips, in yellow bows and shirts.  Nicole English shifted posture, demeanour, and a few costume details to distinguish between Maureen (a moorhen friend of the mother duck), Lowbutt (a domesticated chicken), and Mother Swan.

The music for the show was provided by Erik Mortimer on keyboard.  (The small child behind me commented after intermission “He’s really good!”)  The songs were pleasant and catchy and the choreography fun to watch and suitable to the characters and species.  I had trouble discerning the words in one or two of the early songs, which was irritating because the words I could make out were very clever, and I’m not sure whether the problem was tempo or balance with the keyboard.  I particularly enjoyed Kayla Nickel’s singing voice.  I think the last thing I saw her in was MacEwan’s Spring Awakening, although I may have seen her in something since.

HONK is a production of Grindstone Theatre, the people who do The 11 O’Clock Number.  It’s playing at the PCL Studio space at the Arts Barns until April 26th.  Tickets are at Tix on the Square or at the door.

Ukelelia, echolalia, wordplay

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After picking up my Sunworks turkey at the Strathcona Market, I took in another Snow Globe Festival performance this afternoon, this time Brother Platypus & Sister SuKat Go To The Sea, by Spirot with Khiara Quigley, directed by Murray Utas.

It was poetic, funny, musical, allegorical, and kind of free-associational in a similar way to other Steve Pirot/Murray Utas work, but at the same time appropriate for young audiences.  There was a story with problem and resolution, but it was not entirely plot-driven.   So, it was pretty much what I expected but at the same time enjoyably surprising.

Both performers, Sydney Gross and Steve Pirot, were playing ukeleles and singing. I’ve seen Sydney Gross behind the lights/sound boards lots of times but I don’t think I’d ever seen her on stage, but in this role she was enchantingly childlike but not childish, easy to identify with.  There was a little bit of dance, a little bit of audience participation, and wordplay for both kids (that name rings a bell!  Literally, and every time!) and adults (random apposite quotation from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”)  There was also fantastical Matt Schuurman background video.

I’m not going to be able to catch the third show in the Snow Globe Festival, but each of the three plays has one more performance tonight.  One suggestion for Promise Productions:  next year, it would be great if people could find your schedule with fewer clicks – your website has the 2012 schedule and your Facebook event requires a bit of scrolling-down.

“Just because I’m a legend, doesn’t mean I’m not real”

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The Snow Globe Festival of Children’s Theatre is happening until Saturday evening at C103 (next to the Yardbird Suite in the parking lot of the Strathcona Market).  There are three plays, and some interstitial amusements between.  The schedule allows for school groups on weekdays, and performances for the general public in the evenings and Saturday afternoon.  Two of the plays in this year’s festival are new work, Boogie Monster Club by Ben Gorodetsky and Brother Platypus & Sister SuKat Go To The Sea by Spirot with Khiara Quigley.  The third is How to Eat Like a Child, the musical based on Delia Ephron’s book.

This evening I enjoyed a performance of Boogie Monster Club, directed by Andrew Ritchie (most recently AD on Bitches and Money 1878) and featuring Ben Gorodetsky, Lianna Makuch, and Todd Houseman, all familiar faces. The premise of this show is that kids from different cultures grow up with different nightmare-monsters, and that those monsters have emigrated to Canada or moved to Edmonton following the kids they want to frighten.  Each of the performers plays an Edmonton kid about ten years old (Vovo from Ukraine, Maggie from South Africa, and Dustin from Hobbema the small mostly-Cree town south of the city), and also plays a monster (Wendigo the malevolent Cree spirit, Baba Yaga the mortar-and-pestle-flying witch, and Tikoloshe, an evil spirit from Zulu mythology that likes to bite sleeping people’s toes).  As the monsters, they wore character masks and cloaks, with appropriate body language, voice, and credible accent.  And they were quite different.  The Wendigo still had power over the child of his culture, and was noticeably the scariest of the three, with big black eyes in a blank mask.  Tikoloshe was almost cute, low to the ground and wearing something that reminded me of a costume from Cats.  And Baba Yaga, of whom I had been quite frightened when I read illustrated stories about her as a child, was hilarious in her attempts to be scarier and her mispronunciations.  I can imagine that she would have had a roomfull of ten-year-olds rolling on the floor and repeating her funny lines and gestures all day or until the teacher made them stop the peeing-my-pants action.   But the part that had me guffawing more was when she stood at the child’s bedside musing about how to be scarier and he sat up and said “You can’t monologue in here – I need my nap!”

Interestingly, the play managed happy endings for both conflicting groups, the children who wanted to banish the nightmares and the monsters who wanted to be scary again.  There was a little bit of summing up the life lessons that struck me as too heavy-handed for my taste, but was probably appropriate for the intended elementary-school audience.   It was clever and fun and had a sweet relevant message.  Tix on the Square has tickets for all three shows, but the schedule for the rest of the festival is easiest to read on Facebook.

Chris Craddock’s Velveteen Rabbit – charming and satisfying Christmas fare

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Margery Williams’ original Velveteen Rabbit was published in 1922.  Chris Craddock’s adaptation, first produced last year, makes the story work for modern sensibilities and builds in enough exposition of unfamiliar concepts and customs to allow contemporary children to follow the tale, by using the framing story of a Dad (Chris Craddock) reading the old book to his youngest child (Alyson Dicey), while answering her questions and talking about their family.  “What’s the name of the Boy in the story?” the little girl asks, proposes her own name, suggests a few more changes “And there’s a robot, okay Dad?” and then leaps into acting it out.  The scenes then alternate between the period story and the contemporary bedtime reading.  The children’s ways of narrating and negotiating pretending games are spot-on, in the same way as the characters in Craddock’s Fringe 2012 play, “Apocalypse: A Period Piece” shifted seamlessly between making real plans and imagining themselves as Elvis, President Kennedy, and their father.

In the story, the Velveteen Rabbit and other non-human characters are appealing puppets (credited to Green Fools Theatre).  Jamie Cavanagh’s Skin Horse was particularly expressive.  Tatyana Rac as Nana, in white pinafore, showed her affection for the Boy and her own grief at having to dispose of the Velveteen Rabbit.  I was a bit distracted by trying to figure out whether her accent was supposed to be from Belfast, Glasgow, or somewhere else, and then got wondering about the relative class marking of having an Irish or Scottish nanny.

In the bedtime reading, the little girl asks whether the Boy’s parents are dead like her own mother, or whether they’re not in the story because they don’t love him.  The Dad explains that in those days the way loving parents took care of their kids was to hire a good Nana.  The little girl asks what scarlet fever is, and begs her father never to burn her toys if she gets sick.  The Dad reassures her that we have better ways of dealing with germs nowadays, and tries to slip into the story a line about washing your hands before meals.

You might remember that the happy ending of the book is that the toy, set aside to be incinerated because of germs, is magically reincarnated as a real flesh-and-blood rabbit to jump and dance with other rabbits forever.  The real rabbit later has a brief encounter in the garden with an older Boy, who almost recognises him.  I suppose that in that era, that’s one of the few positive ways of imagining a happy ending for a well-loved toy – although the hint that the Skin Horse had been kept around after being loved into reality by the Boy’s uncle suggests some tolerance of sentiment.  But I can’t help wondering whether the ending seems equally satisfying to contemporary young people who were encouraged to hang on to their own well-loved bears, taking them gently to university and giving them places of honour in their own homes.

The story of the toy being outgrown by the Boy is echoed by the Dad’s stories about cherishing the stages early in each of his children’s lives where they think he is awesome, before they move on to video games that he isn’t good at.  The happy ending of the contemporary narrative shows the little girl growing up, bringing a boyfriend home for Christmases, getting married, and then handing the Dad a little bundle of baby, for whom he will “get to be awesome” once again.

The show was at the newish Capitol Theatre venue in Fort Edmonton Park.  Its last performance for this season was this afternoon, but it’s worth watching for next year.

Capitol Theatre at Fort Edmonton Park

Capitol Theatre at Fort Edmonton Park

The key concept of the original story is that toys can become Real when children love them.  I wasn’t particularly fond of the story as a child, because I wasn’t attached to stuffed animals myself and because I found the story too sad.  But it’s a powerful concept, validating children’s lives of imagination and empowering them.  It’s also an image worth borrowing.  Jesse Green’s 1999 memoir Velveteen Father: An Unexpected Journey to Parenthood talks about what happened after he fell in love with a man who was adopting children.  Although he’d never anticipated being a parent, and although he had no biological or legal ties to the children, he became a real parent because the children loved him and made him a real parent.  On this Christmas Eve, I’m looking at the parcels under my tree from the faraway young people who made me a parent in the same way, real because children loved me, and I feel very fortunate to be a velveteen parent.  I hope that all of you will have love in your lives, no matter what form it comes in.