Reviews 2013
Reviews 2013
✭✭✭✭✩
by Andri Snær Magnason, translated by Julian D’Arcy & Andri Snær Magnason, directed by Allan MacInnis
Young People’s Theatre with Nordiska ApS (Copenhagen), Young People’s Theatre, Toronto
April 11-May 2, 2013
“The flight of the butterflies was the greatest wonder in the blue planet and a day of true happiness,” The Story of the Blue Planet, Chapter 1
Young People’s Theatre has remounted its 2005 hit Blue Planet with an all-new cast in a spectacular production. It is a compact fable about ecology, idealism and prejudice presented in the form of an exciting adventure tale by Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason based on his 1999 children’s book that has won numerous awards including a Green Earth Honor Award this year. The point of the play is to teach children that human beings have a responsibility to protect the environment, but the play does not do so didactically but through the logic and vitality of its storytelling.
The story takes place on a planet inhabited entirely by children since the “well of youth” in their hearts has never run dry. It focusses on a happy group who live on paradisal island in the midst of a vast ocean. Their life is constant play and enjoying the beauties of nature, such as a cave filled with butterflies awaking and flying in a beam of sunlight, is their greatest pleasure.
One day it happens that a spaceman lands his rocket ship on the island. At first the children think it is a horrible monster, but in fact it turns out to be only a cheerful travelling vacuum cleaner salesman named Jolly Goodday (Rylan Wilkie). Goodday claims he can grant the children anything they wish. They are so happy as they are, it is hard to think of anything but Goodday suggests that perhaps they would like to fly. The children heartily agree that that is their greatest wish and Goodday knows how to arrange it. All he has to do is vacuum up the dust on the wings of the butterflies and sprinkle it on the children. In return all the children need pay is just a drop of the youth they have stored up in their hearts.
Much flying ensues (yes, flying on the main stage of Young People’s Theatre, with up to three people at a time!) and the children are overjoyed and forget their former, simpler pleasures. The one problem is that, like butterflies, the children can fly only during daylight. Goodday has a solution for that, too. All he needs to do is nail the sun to the sky to fix it perpetually over the children’s island. Payment for this is another drop of youth. Goodday’s solution works well until clouds cover the sun. When the children complain, Goodday looses a sky-wolf on the clouds to drive the clouds to the other side of the planet and keep the sun unobscured all day. This requires yet another payment of youth.
When the children decide to have a flying contest, two of them – Brimir (Jakob Ehman) and Hulda (P.J. Prudat) – get blown off course to the other side of the planet. There they find children living they had never even known about before. These children, the Children of the Dark, however, are freezing because they live in perpetual night and rain and are starving because all their plants have died. Feeling guilty for having caused the children’s troubles, Brimir and Hulda lie that where they live on the other side of the planet is even worse than here in the darkness. Luckily, the Children of the Dark have learned to fly on their own with the aid of balloons and give these to Brimir and Hulda to return home.
Once, they arrive on their island they tell the others about the Children of the Dark. Here we see another side of Goodday. First, he wants to deny that such children exist. Second, if they do exist, he thinks their plight is their own bad luck. Should the island children have Goodday call off the sky-wolf and unfix the sun to let the Children of the Dark have the sunny days they used to have? Should the island children even give up the joy of flying so that the butterflies can fly again? And why does it seem that the island children are now growing old?
To stage their story Camellia Koo has designed an absolutely gorgeous set with a low curved back wall painted to look like rock and a floorcloth painted to look like a pool. Above the curve of the rock is the black sky of space and here we see the sun and moon rise and set like hands on a clock and clouds glide in to cover and uncover the sun. She has dressed all the island children in western summer outfits of bright pastels and the Children of the Dark in hooded fur coats. All is beautifully lit by Jason Hand.
The flying is done with no attempt to hide the apparatus. A coat-hanger-like device descends and whoever is to fly attaches the two lines to fixtures on either side of a belt they are wearing. The double lines allow them not just to fly but to do somersaults in mid-air. The staging makes wise use of children’s psychology. If there were any attempt to conceal the flying lines, children in the audience would readily point them out. Since they lines are not concealed, the audience accepts the convention and sits back to enjoy the imagery. Flying director Johnny O. Pickett has created wonderfully inventive aerial choreography. This is important because to help the Children of the Dark, we have to feel that the island children are giving up something that is a real pleasure.
Rylan Wilkie is excellent as Jolly Goodday. From the beginning we sense that there is something too good to be true about him and all he claims. But Wilkie makes his friendly nature seem completely genuine so that the island children can’t be seen as foolish for believing what he says. As the two main children Jakob Ehman and J.P. Prudat subtly signal their conversion from happy egocentricity to guilt at the sight of the Children of the Dark and shame that they have lied about their own condition. The other four children – Jasmine Chen, Darrel Gamotin, Jajube Mandiela and Aaron Stern – play their roles with a general ebullience, in stark contrast to the concerned stoicism they display as the Children of the Dark.
Director Allen MacInnis stages the action using the entire auditorium. The arrival of the spaceship, shown in silhouette, does look very much like a monster, and MacInnis has the cast runs screaming up and down the aisles, exaggerating with each telling how ugly the thing looks, so that when Goodday appears on stage in his spacesuit the whole crowd has a good scream followed by a good laugh when he takes it off.
This is a delightful show that is exhilarating both visually and dramatically. Its a story that adults and children of the recommended Grade 3-8 range will get caught up in without even realizing that the story has lessons to teach. Magnason and MacInnis make the joy of flying so appealing that we instantly side with the island children and later have to face within ourselves the problem that our pleasure has caused other people pain. Magnason and MacInnis are also smart in showing Goodday not as an outright villain, but as someone who egocentrically exploits children’s youth just as the children egocentrically ask to have the sun stop forever over their island. This is a children’s show that adults will appreciate as much as their children for its stimulating combination of spectacle and wisdom.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Jasmine Chen, Rylan Wilkie, Jajube Mandiela, Darrel Gamotin, Jakob Ehman and Aaron Stern. ©2013 Mark Seow.
For tickets, visit http://youngpeoplestheatre.ca.
2013-04-13
Blue Planet