A few weeks ago we posted an interview with Marc Arthur about his highly anticipated theatrical adaptation of Peter and the Wolf. Alas, the time came and the time passed and now all we have to share are our memories, but the memories those that ventured out to see the play share are grand, for Marc’s adaptation truly dazzled. His vision was a unique one, with a cast largely made up of kids using live action painting and dance to tell the tale. After interviewing Marc (and since I have known his work for awhile) I had a sense that the play would truly break apart traditional theatrical conventions, but waited with bated breath to see if his description would match the actual experience of viewing the play.
After the lights dimmed and the play began all anxieties faded as the audience wandered into a fanciful tale full of color and extreme language rarely expressed through children. A favorite line of my girlfriend and mine was spoken by one little girl to the other and was something like, “Do you see what nature did to you?” The line was used as a jab, the little girl belittled was a duck that was regularly harassed and put down by the other girls for being unable to fly. Eventually the little duck burst into tears and confessed, “Because I love Justin Beiber.” The line invoked laughter in much of the audience, but in retrospect it truly was a peculiar laughter since so many little girls are caught in the same emotional reverie as the little duckling that couldn’t fly. Am I really that immature that I find humor in a little girls pain as she longs for her idol? I guess I too “am a sick man and a spiteful man,” the Grandfather quoted Fyodor Dostoevsky as s/he took the stage from a seat in the audience.
Breaking the wall between audience and show wasn’t the only way the play broke convention, in the end the whole play evolved into an auction house wherein the live-action painting that continually evolved throughout the play was bidded away at somewhere around 100,000 pounds. I’m sure every director in the audience cringed as they, for the first time, realized the enormous opportunity theater provides to auction off art. After this, the ballerina’s took stage again, by now though, their outfits and faces were covered in paint, another reminder of innocence’s fragile nature, the once clean little girls, like the rest of the characters, prove just how dirty and simultaneously beautiful the world can be.
Here’s a short little clip I took of a choreographed dance scene of Peter painting while the Ballerina’s took flight into reverie:
I am so sad I missed this!
oh no talya! how devastating!!!
Marc Arthur’s production of Peter And The Wolf was one of the most stirring and daring shows I have ever seen. Simultaneously heartbreaking and beautiful, his remarkable vision continually challenged the audience to keep their own eyes, ears and minds sharp and agile as the scenes, action and script rapidly shifted from one cultural reference to classic literature, contemporary media and the arts to another. All this, while viscerally telling a grand tale of lost innocence, growth and change, along with all the new-found uncertainties and fear that entails.
All of the actors’ performances were simply excellent, but there were particularly gifted efforts from Calvin Rezen as Peter, and especially Erol Tamerman as Cat. Ryan Lawrence and Joshua Weidenmiller’s choreography skillfully and successfully expressed the emotions and feelings that were playing out onstage, and Savannah Wurlitzer Knoop’s costumes radically elevated the characters to parity with the dreamlike quality of the entire show. And wow – those ballerinas with their paint-laden tutus by the end of the performance. What a sight!
The gigantic painting created by the actors during the course of the performance truly succeeded in portraying the story that had unfolded before the audience. As you looked at it at the end of the show, you could see all of the pivotal moments up there on the canvas. How many artists out there would have the faith and vision to put the brush in someone else’s hand, direct the genesis and expression of the moment, and then trust in the execution of immortalizing that moment by someone other than themself? Marc Arthur’s paintbrushes are the human beings themselves. Remarkable, indeed.
All in all, Bravo to Marc and company for bringing this incredible performance to the stage. I know it’s certainly one I’ll never forget.