By Brent Hamilton
(Freelance and Western Film Festival critic)
The pirates are on the loose! That is live pirates from Treasure Island. In the wonderful world premier children's play "The Magic Book" characters literally walk out of the 200 year old Robert Lewis Stevenson novel.
Once on stage whom do these buccaneers raid and pillage? Why
Tom Sawyer, Oliver Twist, Little Red Riding Hood, and characters from Grims Fairy tales, of course.
Carmichael playwright and set designer Paul Stewart has given us a frightfully realistic looking "magic" library full of books tall enough for a grown man to walk in and out of.
Last year The Voice Fitness Institute saw the production of his highly successful adult-themed play "When It Is, When It Isn't." Stewart, a freelance commercial artist who also works in video production seems to jump from project to project. If he weren't so busy he'd become a renaissance man.
"The Magic Book" is one show I strongly recommend for the whole family. Can you drag your kids away from the TV for one afternoon?
It all begins when very modern preteen twins Tina and Randy (skillfully played by Alexandra Widman and Jesse Davidson) fall asleep in their great grandmother's attic. The attic is a dusty old home library full of regular size books. The room and these works of classic literature date back to a time before TV and video games. When kids may have actually dared to read books on dark rainy days.
The twins wake up, pull the covers off their beds and find they've become giant hardback books. The walls are no longer rows of regular size books, but six foot high novels that are actually doors into other worlds of fiction.
You realize there is a problem when Tom Sawyer (brilliantly played by Tor Tarantola) steps out of the orphanage scene in Oliver Twist. As the book opens we hear "please sir may I have some more."
This Tom Sawyer may look 12 but he's really well over 100. No longer the irresponsible prankster, he's now head clerk of the "Grand Central Library." He greets the twins and explains to them that anyone from the "real world" is welcome in the library if they use their imaginations and develop a love for classic literature.
What do these characters do between chapters? They "book leap" which means they visit other stories and make friends. All is not well however, it seems Long John Silver and his gang have kidnapped the head librarian and stolen her magic book.
The pirates have brain washed an assortment of characters into joining them. This explains why Heide and Goldilocks enter looking and talking like trailer trash. Various characters from Mother Goose have added pirate accessories to their wardrobes.
Tina and Randy realize it is all just a dream, (parts of the attic are still visible, the window and a few pieces of furniture.)
But they become scared when no one down stairs hears their screams after a six foot four 300 pound Long John Silver enters and breaths on them. Aaron M. Harmon is just plain excellent as the classic Long John. From his ancient English sailor accent to his wooden leg limp. Also very convincing was Ray Lankford as his sidekick.
The production makes full use of 21 children, a few teenagers and
a few near babies. Only two full sized adults lead the team of brain washed kids and menace the still innocent ones, this convention works quite effectively.
Some of these child actors were champs; others appear to have had little or no stage experience. In scenes of all-out chaos kids running around aimlessly works. Such as the hysterical bit where a stream of kids are chased by the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Quasimoto exits one book then magically appears a second later walking through another book 30 feet away! This was achieved by real life identical twins Josh and Joe Dennis.
Stewart has written a great play that is funny and easy to understand, not to mention down right educational without being preachy. However, there are some slightly complicated plot elements, how else can we travel to an attic in New Jersey, to a magic library, rescue a librarian (trapped in the Jungle Book) and back again?
In order to make the show work during crucial scenes, there can not be distracting elements. Simply put, too many kids are on stage looking lost too often.
The direction was lapse and seemed almost nonexistent at times, particularly during the sword fight scenes. One guesses this may also have to do with limited rehearsal time.
The only other adult in the cast is veteran local actress, Bobby Stewart as Mary Ann the head Librarian, who also doubles as the twin's great-grand mother.
She does a wonderful job going from caring mother figure to stone cold no-nonsense stereotypical never-married school marm. It turns out the actress is the mother of the playwright.
Not to give the plot away, but the show ends with the twins saving the world of literature and putting the story lines and the characters back in their original order. At least that's what we think until...
The show also contains a few song and dance numbers, a couple fits in very well. Gerald Rheault's original piano tunes were quite catchy. Jill Widman's choreography was first rate. The show runs less than an hour and a half, is Stewart planning to make it an all out musical next?
Go see the show and drop by the library with your kids afterward. To quote a lyric during the pirate rap number "this ain't Mother Goose, this ain't Dr. Seuss, we're going to the real world and we're gonna cut lose!"
