James and the Giant Peach
Words and music by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, book by Timothy Allen McDonald, directed by Nina Lee Aquino. Until March 18 at Young People’s Theatre, 165 Front St. E. youngpeoplestheatre.ca or 416-862-2222
In the off-beam imagination of Roald Dahl, canals are made of chocolate (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), little girls are superheroes (Matilda) and a piece of fruit can grow bigger than a house and fly.
This latter scenario is at the centre of Dahl’s first successful young adult novel, James and the Giant Peach, published in 1961, here turned into a musical for kids 6 years old and up.
A success at Young People’s Theatre two years ago, it’s being revived with a new cast and creative team. While the material retains some of its capacity to transport young audiences, there’s a spark missing from Nina Lee Aquino’s production that keeps the material more earthbound than soaring.
In keeping with YPT’s core values, it’s entertainment with a strong social message: that families don’t have to be traditional to have value. For orphaned James (Matt Nethersole), unlikely kinship forms with a band of insects who grow to human size when he inadvertently feeds them a magic potion. He meets them inside a peach that’s been made gigantic by the same fertilizer, and they go on a great adventure when the peach rolls into the sea and starts floating from the U.K. to New York City.
Of particular interest is the contribution of composing team Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote the lyrics for the Oscar-nominated song “City of Stars” in La La Land and created the Broadway hit Dear Evan Hansen, which will likely vie against Canada’s own Come From Away in the 2017 Tony Awards.
But while individual voices are strong, the score doesn’t really pop, in part because the orchestration of the big numbers like “Money on That Tree” is just outside the reach of the eight-person ensemble under Jason Jestadt’s musical direction.
The best fun for grown-ups in this material comes from the exaggerated evil-comic figures of James’s heartless, greedy aunts Spiker (Amaka Umeh) and Sponge (Amy Lee), who exile him to the basement and try to monetize the big peach by turning it into a media sensation. The zeal with which Umeh embraces the baddie role is a highlight and Lee (the latter half of the clown duo Morro and Jasp) shows off her strong capacity for character voice work and knockabout physicality.
There’s a pared-back flatness to the overall creative approach epitomized by Teresa Przybylski’s initial set design: two painted panels that don’t even attempt to fully disguise a jungle-gym-like contraption behind them. Cast members pull the panels back to reveal the big fruit where most of the action takes place and it’s good fun to watch the cast climb all over it as it revolves in place. It’s also a smart choice on Aquino and choreographer Nicola Pantin’s part to allow the action to sometimes move off the peach to use the whole stage for musical numbers.
A concern in delivering Dahl’s work to younger kids is its darkness, which this production addresses by speeding through elements that might be upsetting, such as James’s parents’ death before the action starts at the horns of a rhino in the London Zoo — an approach that appeared to work most of the time with the littler audience members at the performance I attended (lots of smiles, no apparent cringes or tears). But for more important plot points the drive-by approach is distracting: exactly what happens to Spiker and Sponge when the peach and its inhabitants arrive in the Big Apple is too hard to discern. Also expedient, but potentially confusing, is the retention of U.K. locations despite the use of Canadian accents.
The combined commitment of YPT and of Aquino (artistic director of Factory Theatre) to diversity is in strong evidence in a cast dominated by talented artists of colour. The senior member of the cast, Bruce Dow, is a particular delight in a number of character roles.
While not YPT’s strongest work, there is fun to be had in this production, which runs through March Break.
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