CHILDREN’S THEATRE NEED NOT BE HALF-ASSED THEATRE
The unique and often difficult thing about working in theatres, especially when asked to review plays, is that you are working when plays are being performed. On the flip side, the unique and often wonderful thing about working in theatres is that you develop a definite relationship with the plays you do get to see.
I am an usher/box office assistant at two theatres in Toronto. Living the dream, as an old friend from high school told me when I ran into randomly in the grocery store on one of my flying visits to my parent’s home. It was never my dream to be an usher, but I think she was referring to the dream of being a young actor. I hope.
My weekend theatre is Solar Stage Children’s Theatre in North York. As far as theatre spaces go, it’s unprepossessing in the extreme. Hidden in the basement of the Madison Centre, it’s a stage of barely twenty feet and a crushed dressing room and an office stacked with desks and filing cabinets.
Currently playing at Solar Stage Children’s Theatre are adaptations of Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess and Fifty Below Zero, performed as a double bill. These two well-loved children’s books have been adapted by artistic director Zenon Skrzypczyk. Your guess is as good as mine on pronunciation. To make The Paper Bag Princess longer, he has added a long, character building scene for Prince Ronald at the beginning, where we are introduced to how vain and egotistical he is, a truth that we can all see, even though his princess is blind to the fact, and an epic quest for Princess Elizabeth, where she trudges through the woods with great resolve to find her prince, even when she is distracted by a rhyming old woman and a little girl with a unique family tree. Also, the dragon has been given a back-story. He begins the play as a seamstress employed in Prince Ronald’s castle, in order to steal the Prince’s jewels, only to reveal himself to be a dragon when angered.
The biggest stand out amongst the cast of four, about all the stage can hold without it looking like a train wreck, is Chelsea Larkin as Princess Elizabeth. Not only does she have a lovely voice and creates an endearing and courageous princess, but she is a deft hand with the audience of children, who can sometimes get too vocal or drift away from the performance.
Peter Jenson as Prince Ronald is fine. He can sing. He monologues well, which is important for this adaptation. He exudes all the ego Prince Ronald should, but I can’t help but feel he’s giving us the cut-out of a prince. I probably think this because I have had the unfair advantage of seeing him as a prince during Solar Stage’s October show, The Frog Prince, and he hasn’t changed his stance much since then.
Ashley White as the Seamstress, Rhyming Old Woman, and Little Girl is very watchable, if a bit over the top. I can’t decide if that’s my adult sensibilities getting in the way or if she is just too much. Playing three different parts, she does give us three distinct characters, but a bit like Jenson’s Prince, she seems to go the extreme of a stereotype. She’s most compelling as the Rhyming Old Woman, warping her body into a hunchback shape and rasping her voice in an alarming manner.
The Dragon is played by Nicholas Terpstra, to great effect. There is an animated film version of The Paper Bag Princess in a collection of Robert Munsch stories which were aired as a television series in 1992 and released on video (let’s take a moment to reflect on how depressingly dated that sounds) under the title Bunch of Munsch. Terpstra’s Dragon has a voice that rings in my head as sounding very like the Dragon from that animated version. Years have passed since I last saw that, so maybe nostalgia is kicking me in the senses, but for better or worse, that is what he sounds like. This is neither good nor bad. Merely an observation. He’s a convincing enough Dragon to put our earliest audiences in tears, though.
When watching the show, I always feel like the actors are giving the adults in the audience a bit of a nudge and a wink. As though there is some sort of conspiracy going on, where the children are just a little bit dumb and we’re fooling them with our little play. They’re getting really into it; shhh, don’t tell them that it’s fake. And I really wish that didn’t happen. Children are not stupid. Children are actually more perceptive than most adults I know.
My other complaint is that I get that the sense that there is some misguided concept that because it’s children’s theatre, it doesn’t need to go all out to keep them interested. I’m talking about the set and costumes and all the trappings of theatre. This, again, stems from adults who underestimate kids. Yes, it is a small space, and I’m sure the budget is tight, because it’s always tight in theatre, but I wish a bit more effort was put into the set and costume execution. The design is great, but it’s all just a bit two-dimensional. Literally. The trees are amorphous green and brown blobs on a background of vaguely purple sky and absurdly lush, rolling hills, which is supposed to place the scene in a more faerie tale-ish, other world. I think. The bathtub in Fifty Below Zero has claw feet painted on a piece of wood and Velcroed near the base of it. Sitting in the back of the theatre, I always forget what they are, because they don’t really look like anything. The fire breathed by the dragon is a sound effect that sounds more like television static than a burst of flame and a flash of red light. A flat and some not so subtle positioning masks the fact that nothing is actually coming out of his mouth.
The Paper Bag Princess is bright and fun and, if our early audiences are anything to go by, a little bit scary. The actors deliver on fleshed out characters rooted in the original Robert Munch story. It has a lovely message for the children of today, who are so inundated with images of what is beautiful or acceptable or cool or, well, the list could go on for a long while. In the end, Princess Elizabeth tells us that ‘it’s what we think and what we believe’ that makes us into the people that we are.
Working at Solar Stage has been a unique experience. I know unique has a bit of a negative connotation; unique has come to be a euphemism for bad or unpleasant. Working at Solar Stage is neither of those things. It has its own challenges – from the four children who screamed and cried so loudly when the dragon first came on stage at the opening of The Paper Bag Princess, that their parents had to leave the theatre until Fifty Below Zero, and I was lectured by one mother on how we should have had a warning about the scariness of the dragon (which we now do) to the six-year-old boy who insisted I play Monster with him (which meant I had to run around the risers while he chased me, snarling and drooling) – but, all told, it’s a good time. The shows are well performed, even if I do wish that a bit more effort were put into production values. Despite the flaws, I recommend taking children to Solar Stage. I recommended it to my cousin, who has two young children. I have yet to see a child leave our theatre unhappy. The demographic is ages 3 to twelve. Any older than that and I suggest moving them on to LKTYP. Or Ross Petty Pantomimes.
The unique and often difficult thing about working in theatres, especially when asked to review plays, is that you are working when plays are being performed. On the flip side, the unique and often wonderful thing about working in theatres is that you develop a definite relationship with the plays you do get to see.
I am an usher/box office assistant at two theatres in Toronto. Living the dream, as an old friend from high school told me when I ran into randomly in the grocery store on one of my flying visits to my parent’s home. It was never my dream to be an usher, but I think she was referring to the dream of being a young actor. I hope.
My weekend theatre is Solar Stage Children’s Theatre in North York. As far as theatre spaces go, it’s unprepossessing in the extreme. Hidden in the basement of the Madison Centre, it’s a stage of barely twenty feet and a crushed dressing room and an office stacked with desks and filing cabinets.
Currently playing at Solar Stage Children’s Theatre are adaptations of Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess and Fifty Below Zero, performed as a double bill. These two well-loved children’s books have been adapted by artistic director Zenon Skrzypczyk. Your guess is as good as mine on pronunciation. To make The Paper Bag Princess longer, he has added a long, character building scene for Prince Ronald at the beginning, where we are introduced to how vain and egotistical he is, a truth that we can all see, even though his princess is blind to the fact, and an epic quest for Princess Elizabeth, where she trudges through the woods with great resolve to find her prince, even when she is distracted by a rhyming old woman and a little girl with a unique family tree. Also, the dragon has been given a back-story. He begins the play as a seamstress employed in Prince Ronald’s castle, in order to steal the Prince’s jewels, only to reveal himself to be a dragon when angered.
The biggest stand out amongst the cast of four, about all the stage can hold without it looking like a train wreck, is Chelsea Larkin as Princess Elizabeth. Not only does she have a lovely voice and creates an endearing and courageous princess, but she is a deft hand with the audience of children, who can sometimes get too vocal or drift away from the performance.
Peter Jenson as Prince Ronald is fine. He can sing. He monologues well, which is important for this adaptation. He exudes all the ego Prince Ronald should, but I can’t help but feel he’s giving us the cut-out of a prince. I probably think this because I have had the unfair advantage of seeing him as a prince during Solar Stage’s October show, The Frog Prince, and he hasn’t changed his stance much since then.
Ashley White as the Seamstress, Rhyming Old Woman, and Little Girl is very watchable, if a bit over the top. I can’t decide if that’s my adult sensibilities getting in the way or if she is just too much. Playing three different parts, she does give us three distinct characters, but a bit like Jenson’s Prince, she seems to go the extreme of a stereotype. She’s most compelling as the Rhyming Old Woman, warping her body into a hunchback shape and rasping her voice in an alarming manner.
The Dragon is played by Nicholas Terpstra, to great effect. There is an animated film version of The Paper Bag Princess in a collection of Robert Munsch stories which were aired as a television series in 1992 and released on video (let’s take a moment to reflect on how depressingly dated that sounds) under the title Bunch of Munsch. Terpstra’s Dragon has a voice that rings in my head as sounding very like the Dragon from that animated version. Years have passed since I last saw that, so maybe nostalgia is kicking me in the senses, but for better or worse, that is what he sounds like. This is neither good nor bad. Merely an observation. He’s a convincing enough Dragon to put our earliest audiences in tears, though.
When watching the show, I always feel like the actors are giving the adults in the audience a bit of a nudge and a wink. As though there is some sort of conspiracy going on, where the children are just a little bit dumb and we’re fooling them with our little play. They’re getting really into it; shhh, don’t tell them that it’s fake. And I really wish that didn’t happen. Children are not stupid. Children are actually more perceptive than most adults I know.
My other complaint is that I get that the sense that there is some misguided concept that because it’s children’s theatre, it doesn’t need to go all out to keep them interested. I’m talking about the set and costumes and all the trappings of theatre. This, again, stems from adults who underestimate kids. Yes, it is a small space, and I’m sure the budget is tight, because it’s always tight in theatre, but I wish a bit more effort was put into the set and costume execution. The design is great, but it’s all just a bit two-dimensional. Literally. The trees are amorphous green and brown blobs on a background of vaguely purple sky and absurdly lush, rolling hills, which is supposed to place the scene in a more faerie tale-ish, other world. I think. The bathtub in Fifty Below Zero has claw feet painted on a piece of wood and Velcroed near the base of it. Sitting in the back of the theatre, I always forget what they are, because they don’t really look like anything. The fire breathed by the dragon is a sound effect that sounds more like television static than a burst of flame and a flash of red light. A flat and some not so subtle positioning masks the fact that nothing is actually coming out of his mouth.
The Paper Bag Princess is bright and fun and, if our early audiences are anything to go by, a little bit scary. The actors deliver on fleshed out characters rooted in the original Robert Munch story. It has a lovely message for the children of today, who are so inundated with images of what is beautiful or acceptable or cool or, well, the list could go on for a long while. In the end, Princess Elizabeth tells us that ‘it’s what we think and what we believe’ that makes us into the people that we are.
Working at Solar Stage has been a unique experience. I know unique has a bit of a negative connotation; unique has come to be a euphemism for bad or unpleasant. Working at Solar Stage is neither of those things. It has its own challenges – from the four children who screamed and cried so loudly when the dragon first came on stage at the opening of The Paper Bag Princess, that their parents had to leave the theatre until Fifty Below Zero, and I was lectured by one mother on how we should have had a warning about the scariness of the dragon (which we now do) to the six-year-old boy who insisted I play Monster with him (which meant I had to run around the risers while he chased me, snarling and drooling) – but, all told, it’s a good time. The shows are well performed, even if I do wish that a bit more effort were put into production values. Despite the flaws, I recommend taking children to Solar Stage. I recommended it to my cousin, who has two young children. I have yet to see a child leave our theatre unhappy. The demographic is ages 3 to twelve. Any older than that and I suggest moving them on to LKTYP. Or Ross Petty Pantomimes.
You're absolutely right. Despite tight budgets and performance spaces, a little effort really can go a long way, especially in childrens theatre. Other than this blog, is there any way you could share your thoughts with Skrzypczyk? (Yeah, I said it right)... Even anonymously? Do you even want to or think it's worth it? Personally, I think anything associated with the name Robert Munsch should be outstanding and exciting for both the little kiddies and parents alike. He's done so much for childrens literature and theatre over the past few decades. His work in particular need never be presented or performed "half-assed"... =)
ReplyDeletePersonally, I have a very awkward relationship with most kids, but I'm the first to tell you that a kid's understanding is definitely underestimated. However, I can't help but think if kids really care that much about the asthetics of the play they're seeing? I don't know what it looks like exactly, but I use to work at Casa Loma and during Christmas time they always have children's shows. Mind you, they really do a good job of putting the show together, but I always find that kids love having something interactive (in some sense). They get engaged with they are taken seriously by the actors, so I guess that would be my biggest problem with what you were describing. Rather than the set, I would probably get more annoyed by the actors. I don't like it when adults make kids feel stupid.
ReplyDeleteI think a two-dimensional set could work if it were meant to replicate the illustrations from the children's book, but I have a feeling that wasn't the case. That does make me kind of sad--kids deserve good production values, and good production values don't always have to cost a lot!
ReplyDelete