The stage is set with scaffolding, drop clothes, paint brushes and cans. Workmen and women in paint-splattered clothes ask us what we’re here for.
“To see Pinocchio!”
“No, it’s not ready. We’re painting the sets. Go home.”
“NO!” the children in the audience yell back.
The painters are “persuaded” to tell us the story of Pinocchio, using the tools on stage as their only props. In that way, English playwright and director Greg Banks frames an inventive, engaging romp through Carlo Collodi’s 1880s folk tale of a wooden puppet who wants to be a real boy.
My 9-year-old friend Logan said his favorite part of the play was at the beginning when lonely Gepetto carves up his last piece of wood to fashion the wide-eyed inquisitive puppet. From then on we’re laughing as Pinocchio irritates Gepetto by mimicking everything he says, refusing to go to bed and chasing all around the house. Grade-school humor at its best!
The story from there is familiar – Gepetto trades his jacket to buy Pinocchio a book for school, but the little puppet is distracted by a traveling puppet show, given gold coins, tricked out of those coins and left tied to a tree, having never made it to school. The surprise is in the way each of those scenes is played out with every little action and word meticulously played for humor and pathos.
Of course, there has to be a blue fairy, and it’s one of the male actors turning his painting apron around to look like a dress, plopping a blue mop onto his head and being winched into the air on a hook, in all his ungainly glory. Pinocchio lies about why he never made it to school, and he’s given a paper nose that grows, but that part of the story is underplayed. (In case you’re comparing this to the Disney movie, Jiminy Cricket also has a more minor role, and Gepetto doesn’t have a pet fish or cat.)
Poor Pinocchio, still endearing and earnest as he’s being naughty, gets tricked again by wily fox and brain-challenged cat in a hilarious interplay. He finally gets to school, only to be persuaded to go to Playland for endless fun. He and his friend are transformed into donkeys – using paintbrushes for ears – until Pinocchio jumps into the sea to escape. Shadow puppets are used to suggest Pinocchio’s being swallowed by the whale that ingested Gepetto. The puppet wakes up to find that he is indeed a real boy after he has risked his life to save his beloved Papa.
Five actors cycle through all of the parts, led by Elise Langer as a spot-on Pinocchio. There’s never a false move in this Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis production, never a moment that doesn’t zing, and it offers just the right amount of audience participation. Oh, and there’s a musician, Victor Zupanc, who plays a total of 25 instruments, sometimes four at the same time, to move the action along.
In the question-and-answer period at the end, one child asked why some of the things were sad. The actor explained that that’s how life is – sometimes happy and funny and sometimes sad, but the funny parts help tell the whole story.
Logan’s reaction seemed to echo that of most of the children in attendance: “That was great. It was way better than I expected. I liked all of it.”
I agree. If you have a limited budget and can only afford to take your children to one play this year, make it this one.
Photo by Chris Bennion.
