CTM's "Stellaluna" is a Gorgeous, Multi-Media Experience
Photo by Ross Zentner.
If you would like to see an entire audience of five year-olds (and older) lean forward in their theater seats, open their mouths in silent wonder, and flap their wings on cue, simply go see Children’s Theatre of Madison’s current production of Stellaluna. This colorful, exuberant musical, starring the most adorable bat you’ve ever met, is playing at Overture Center in the Playhouse through February 13. At 45 minutes, it is perfectly crafted for its young audience and for the size of the story.
Stellaluna is based on the much-beloved, award-winning book of the same name, by Janell Cannon. It focuses on a little fruit bat who is separated from her mother and taken in by a family of birds. An “ugly duckling” story set in the forest, the play illustrates the difficulty, but also the value, of being different.
Adapted for theater for young audiences by Saskia Janse, with music by Guus Ponsioen, CTM’s production is a spectacle of 3-D puppetry, shadow puppetry, dance, song, and storytelling, both through spoken dialogue and American Sign Language. Directed with his signature visual brilliance, Brian Cowing creates a world that is constantly in motion, awash in vibrant colors, and underpinned with a perfectly balanced mini choir of five, who also provide their own accompaniment on synthesizer, bass, and various percussion instruments.
It is a pleasure to watch the entire cast play on Christopher Dunham’s atmospheric set – an enormous, verdant painted forest of blues and greens, with tree branches interwoven over two stories along the back wall and down onto the stage. The moon that looks down on the action even occasionally transforms into another playing space for shadow puppets.
The ensemble cast of young people and adults, all dressed in interesting base costumes in variations of black, moves with the lightness and grace of birds and the precision of a dance company. In the center of their wordless physicalization of the story is John Kinstler, an accomplished performer who has toured the country with the National Theater of the Deaf. He is mesmerizing as he signs every character’s dialogue, as well as the narration, which is echoed by the musicians/singers/voice actors from their perches high above the action on the stage.
Photo by Ross Zentner.
Young performers flawlessly manipulate the elaborate puppet characters of Stellaluna and her three young bird friends – the puppets even have an impressive dance number. Adults don gorgeous headpieces and silky, colorful wings to portray Mother Bird, Mama Bat, and the threatening Owl. (Uniformly breathtaking costumes and puppets by Rafael Colón Castanera.) As Stellaluna’s worried mother, Christine Saenz is entrancing, “flying” through the forest at night, and hanging upside-down from a branch during the day. And young performer Ava Greenburg does a particularly nice job as Stellaluna with a clear, confident speaking and singing voice.
One small complaint is that, at any given moment it’s hard to know where to look. Equally interesting elements take turns upstaging each other as the story is related in so many different media. But like the moral of the story, combining many unique methods of communication from many different artists with unique skills, makes the overall experience very rich – no matter what part of the performance you are focused on.