Performances shine, but narrative-heavy structure stifles

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This article was published 16/10/2023 (1042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba Theatre for Young People turns the Brothers Grimm’s 211-year-old fairy tale squarely on its head as it opens its six-show, 2023-24 season with U.K.-based playwright Greg Banks’ fresh take on Snow White, the German writers’ quintessential rescue fantasy.

Directed by Young People’s Theatre’s Stephen Colella, the two-hander, which runs through Sunday, often feels like a dizzying kaleidoscope, as MTYP veterans Beverly Ndukwu and Tom Keenan shape-shift through a full cast of characters — including all seven of the original tale’s described “dwarfs” — with chameleonic versatility.

In the original tale, after Snow White loses her own mother in childbirth, her wicked stepmother plots to kill her de facto daughter after a magic mirror tells her the young princess is the “fairest of them all.”

After the jealous new Queen, now disguised as a peasant, poisons her with an apple, a gallant Prince awakens the “deceased” Snow White with a kiss, and they all live happily ever after.

But in Banks’ clever “story-within-a-story” adaptation, the “beautiful and bored” Snow White ultimately forgoes royal cookie-cutter protocol to become a newly empowered, self-determining princess for the ages.

While it’s admittedly tough to hear the actors at times (especially when Ndukwu hides from the Queen behind the Plexiglas walls of the dwarfs’ cottage), the duo skilfully handles the script’s prismatic demands, donning a full Tickle Trunk of rotating costume pieces to denote character changes.

Kids’ theatre needs to be turbocharged, and the show’s energy often flags and sags, though it picks up whenever Ndukwu morphs into the haughty Queen.

It also doesn’t help that the play is structured primarily as a narration, making us feel as if we’re being read to, rather than fully immersing and engaging with the characters via interactive dialogue.

However, Keenan’s tour de force portrayal of all seven dwarfs, differentiating each character through head-spinning changes in voice and physicality (even having a “group conversation” with himself at one point, not to mention tickling fights between brothers) is worth the price of admission alone, recalling the frenzied, high-octane energy and comedic brilliance of a young Robin Williams.

Naturally, there are requisite references to bodily function — “poop” and “toot” in this case — much to the glee of a Saturday matinee’s youngest audience members. Snow White’s penchant for telling cheesy “knock-knock” jokes becomes an effective theatrical device that runs like a leitmotif throughout the one-act play, and greases the wheel for tots and toddlers to gaily bellow back, “Who’s there?”

More physical comedy (we did get a few fleeting moments of “flossing”) would have made this show pop more.

Live musician/composer Natalie Bohrn delivers a sparsely crafted environmental soundscape peppered with pulsing, jazz-flavoured riffs, bird calls and rhythmic stings; she also niftily knocks on her upright bass’s wooden back to depict Snow White’s racing heartbeat as she’s pursued by the Queen.

A fantastical woodland set designed by Christine Ting-Huan Urquhart includes a sculptural forest of real trees wheeled about the stage on pedestals, as well as suspended branches and brambles strung with fairy lights to conjure a starry night sky.

Lighting designer Dean Cowieson’s shadows and light bring further mystery and magic, while Joseph Abetria’s stylized, loosely Germanic costumes pay homage to the fairy tale’s roots.

Boasting a surprise plot twist in this version (no spoilers here), the show itself intrigues with its multiple layers of subtext. Banks’ eschews individual names for the dwarfs (nameless in the original story, they were first given monikers in the 1912 Broadway play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with the characters later rechristened as Sleepy, Bashful, Dopey, etc. in the 1937 Disney animated film). They’re now named by number — “Four,” “One” and so on — which speaks to the loss of personal identity, just as Snow White is driven to seek her own autonomy.

Near the beginning of the play, Four interrupts Snow White to tell her she needs to begin her account of how the two friends first met with a de rigueur “Once upon a time…” When she responds with, “It’s my story, and the story of what really happened,” it underscores her tale — and the whole production — with an ever-timely message that taking ownership of one’s own life, and speaking in an authentic, honest voice, is the best happily-ever-after of all.

holly.harris@shaw.ca