Perhaps it’s just how it happened to strike me this time. But the production is set in what looks like a child’s bedroom (think the Darlings’ room from “Peter Pan”) that the natural world has taken over. A tree limb shoots through a crumbling wall, that kind of thing. The narrator enters the space as if it’s a place he recognizes, blows the dust of a book, then starts to tell the stories. And he remains integrated loosely throughout, never separated from the action. He takes a baby’s mobile of birds and creates Cinderella’s flock like a puppet; he knocks Milky White to the floor to suggest her death. Things like that.
More importantly, the connection between him and the baker, his intrusions into their search, his advice that leads to the baker deciding not to abandon his new baby and responsibilities, it all just struck me as more central to the play than it ever had to me. Perhaps the intimacy of the space had something to do with it. And I should mention the grounded, honest performance of Christopher Bloch in the role.
Of course, in the Park, they had the unique and moving layer of meaning in having Chip Zien play the Mysterious Man. |
