How can I talk about The Borrowers?

One of the rules of this blog, which I have mentioned before but not adequately explained, is that I do not do stage reviews.  I see no value in my pumping or panning a particular production.  Whether recent stagings of Hamlet or The Adding Machine or Glengarry Glen Ross or other chestnuts from the canon are, or are not, up to the professional standards of excellence that Seattle theatre talent is clearly capable of achieving, I honestly do not care.  Nor, frankly, do I think anyone else does outside of this quasi-incestuous community of Seattle theatre professionals.  The discussion I want to have takes place at the next level up.  It has to do with how we can make theatre that matters to the widest possible population of human beings.  I have maintained here and elsewhere that there is something tantamount to fiddling while Rome burns about offering a production of Glengarry Glen Ross and calling it a cogent theatrical response to the recent mortgage meltdown when the play is no such thing and the mortgage meltdown had its epicenter little more than a mile due south of the Seattle Rep at the former Washington Mutual Tower at 3rd and University.  The Seattle theatre administrative elite may believe that nothing actual happens in this city, but history will certainly prove otherwise.

So I will not offer a review of The Borrowers, which I saw this Friday, Opening Night, at Seattle Children’s Theatre.  What I can do is talk about how the play reopened my eyes to something essential about our art form.

For those of you, like me, who did not know the story, The Borrowers is about a family of very small folk who live under the floorboards of an English house.  In the second act, after being forced from their comfortable home, the Clock family emigrates into the great out-of-doors.  At one point as they are wandering the countryside a giant crow comes on stage and threatens to eat them.  As soon as the perfectly wrought puppet bird came on stage I did what every playwright does, I turned to the audience to gauge their response--the key member in this instance being my five-year old son.  His reaction was odd.  He was staring right at the huge bird but did not seem to be seeing it.  It was as if the spectacle was so huge and strange and unlooked-for that his brain just could not process it.  And then suddenly he stiffened.  He saw the bird.  The giant bird.  I stiffened too, because if there was going to be a moment when my little boy would start bawling in fear, this was surely it.  And then something amazing happened.  His eyes widened.  And then a huge wonder-filled grin spread across his face.  He looked over at me and said, “I know there’s a person inside that bird.  I can see his feet.”  This knowledge did not ruin his experience of the moment: exactly the contrary.  His knowing there was a person in that bird allowed my son to fully enjoy the wonder of the story. 

This is important.  This is something essential about theatre.  Our challenge is not to fool people, but to charm them.  The audience neither needs nor wants us to convince them we are, say, Hamlet or Louis Slotin.  They need us to convince them that being these beings matters as part of the human experience. 

Let me track the essential trajectory again:  something giant happens on stage the likes of which our audience member has never seen before.  Said audience member cannot at first even process the experience.  Then comes a shock of recognition of a huge, potentially horrifying truth.  Finally, audience member realizes that this truth is only human after all.

Everything that happens on stage is human.  Everything.

As Pod Clock, the Borrower family father who fights off the giant crow Ian Bell was superb as usual, but remember, I am not reviewing this show and therefore am not officially recommending you go see his delightful performance.  Nor am I suggesting that you share, along with your family the awe that Emily Chisholm, as his daughter Arrietty, channels upon seeing an open field for the first time: “It is a sea!  It is a sea!”  Surely I would never tell you go see Marianne Owen, who so effortlessly balances the flustered chatty charm of Mrs. Clock with a steely core of loyalty for her family.  Nor will I recommend Chris Ensweiler’s tour de force romp through four characters each so distinctly drawn-- but more importantly, distinctly fun!-- that you had trouble keeping in mind that it was the same person playing them.

I cannot recommend any of them.  That is not what I do here.  Remember?

Comments

[Charles Smith]

This non-review is about as funny and interesting as an Ian Bell performance!

[Paul Mullin]

Thanks, Charles.

... I think.

[Charles Smith]

Yeah, I was hoping the exclamation point could take the place of a smiley face emoticon.

[Gary Smoot]

Music to my ears! Thanks Paul! I have always felt, and tried to live up to the idea, that showing the magic is one of the best ways to engage an audience and invite them into the production (and no better test than a 5 year old). And thanks for "Our challenge is not to fool people, but to charm them." ... I am stealing it!

[Paul Mullin]

Thanks, Gary. Feel free to use that line. Consider it payment for the awesome book recommendation. I'm loving YOU ARE NOT A GADGET by Jaron Lanier. Might actually have to buy it.

[Scot Augustson]

See, I did love the Borrowers books. And, if you are going to water it down and cut the incest, why bother?

[Machelle Allman]

I did the same thing, looked at my boy, wondering if he was going to panic, and saw that he was completely entranced by that crow. And Arriety's running around the field was the best thing I've seen on stage in a long time. Charm, indeed.

[Annett Mateo]

As the creator of that Crow... Thank you! It is so much fun to see peoples (all kinds and ages of peoples) reaction(s) to that critter. Thanks much A--