A WRINKLE IN TIME - REVIEW OF 2023 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

For its 2023 Schulich Children’s Play the Stratford Festival offers a redoubtable production of A Wrinkle in Time. The play is based on Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 novel adapted for the stage by Thomas Morgan Jones and it is a world premiere.

What do you get and more precisely and properly what do the youngsters get from the play. The answer is a great deal and more power to the Festival for choosing the novel and commissioning its sage adaptation. 

In no particular order, they get a sci-fi adventure story involving intergalactic travel. Better still, the travelers are youngsters.  We have the mathematically inclined but unsure of herself Meg Murry (Celeste Catena), her brother Charles Wallace (Noah Beemer) and her classmate Calvin (Robert Markus) set out on an incredible journey through some planets in search of Meg’s and Charles’s father played by Jamie Mac. They are “accompanied” by some pretty otherworldly advisors with pretty unusual names. They are Mrs. Whatsit (Nestor Lozano Jr.), Mrs. Who (Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah) and Mrs. Which (Kim Horsman).

Once they leave the earth, the intergalactic travelers will visit planets like Uriel and Camazotz and of course meet baddies like IT, the Man With Red Eyes (Christine Desjardinns) and the Dark Thing. 

From left: Jamie Mac as Father, Celeste Catena as Meg Murry

and Robert Markus as Calvin O'Keefe with (behind) Germaine Konji, 

Erica Peck and Jahlen Barnes as Aunt Beasts in A Wrinkle in Time. 

Stratford Festival 2023. Photo by David Hou

Jones as adapter and director has had to produce an oral and visual narrative of the novel in about 75 minutes. He does so with extraordinary success. The sets designed by Teresa Przybylski are spartan featuring two vertical, rectangular screens that take us to other worlds effortlessly. That is just the beginning. There are many projected images of other worlds and people with effective use of voiceovers. Imaginative use of lighting and dramatic music creates a visual and auditory experience that the written word cannot compete with. The totality of all is to never allow the youngsters’ attention to wane or waiver.

Credit is due to the designers and manipulators of some of the creatures in the play. The normal costumes of the earthlings and the extraordinary in look and imagination in the costumes of the others is owing to Costume Designer Robin Fisher and Assistant Set and Costume Designer Jung A Im. The marvelous lighting that shows storms, visits to other planets and great vistas is the work Kimberly Purtell and Assistants Alia Stephen and Harika Xu. 

Deanna H. Choi is the composer and sound designer with assistant sound designer    Frank Incer. The impressive projection designer is jaymez with assistant Corwin Ferguson. Assistants to the artists that provide ancillary but essential work to a production are rarely if ever mentioned let alone praised. The masterly work displayed in this production leads me to the conviction that the assistants must have played a significant role and should be praised. I praise them.

A Wrinkle in Time has thirty-eight parts (if I counted them correctly) from the three protagonists to voiceovers, to minor and major roles. Noah Beemer, Celeste Catena and Robert Markus are the only actors with a single role, and they do superb work. Director Jones keeps the rest of the cast busy. Take Erica Peck who plays Happy Medium, Camazotz Child, Camazotz Business Person, Man With Red Eyes Servant and Aunt Beast. Space does not permit me to mention them all the jobs these actors did.

All the above is the work of the director, the artistic team behind the scenes and the performers on stage.

What do the children get? First of all, an exciting and mind-expanding sci-fi story. It is also a paean to family love, family unity and the sacrifice that children are prepared to make to save their father. But there is more than their father that they are saving. They are saving civilization. They engage in the eternal fight between good and evil that has always been with us. The novel was written during the cold war when there was evil of course but also the fear of nuclear war and the annihilation of humanity. It seems that very little has changed, and the youngster born well into the 21^st century is well-served by a play that brings all of these factors into play for them to absorb.

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A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, adapted for the stage and directed by Thomas Morgan Jones continues until October 29, 2023, at the Avon Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. www.stratfordfestval.ca

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press. This review appears in the newspaper.