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Swedish
sweethart: Sedvall as the fiesty Pippi Longstocking. |
Duck!
By
James Yeara
Letters
From a Window in the Sky: A Tribute to Astrid Lindgren and
Pippi
By
Mary Jane Hansen, music by Will Severin, directed by Tereza
Andersson
New york state theater institute and Teater Vastmanland, James
L. Meader Little Theatre, Russell Sage College, through June
20
The premiere of Mary Jane Hansen’s Letters From a Window
in the Sky: A Tribute to Astrid Lindgren and Pippi is
unmistakably a NYSTI children’s-theater production: It’s 78
minutes long; there are several short, original, sing-along
songs featuring lyrics like “Oh yes, oh/A hundred years ago/A
100 years is/A very long time/A hundred years ago” that are
taught preshow by longtime NYSTI stalwart Joel Aroeste. The
original songs have a prerecorded electronic kiddy-pop-rock
soundtrack; the sets are rainbow-bright colors that look like
a playground mated with a library, with a curved ladder running
upstage; downstage are wooden blocks and shelves. The two-person
cast, Cicilia Sedvall and David Bunce, create several caricatures
by flying a stuffed duck across a pulley above the stage or
wearing different bright costumes from a colorful box upstage
right, including a red wig and removable pigtails worn by
Cicilia when she pretends to be Pippi Longstocking (NYSTI
is becoming renowned for its wig acting).
Letters
From a Window in the Sky has the brevity, energy, and
single-minded focus of a large children’s birthday party;
I kept having flashbacks of taking my daughters to Chuck E.
Cheese’s. While the message of the play isn’t eat more pizza
and spend more money, its laudable theme—“It doesn’t matter
how you read, so long as you read”—is repeated through the
dozen smaller themes so clearly and earnestly and simply that
it could have been produced by the Church of Latter Day Saints.
This new play starts with Cicilia (Sedvall) hanging upside
down, reading at the top of the curved rainbow ladder. Cicilia
tells the audience that it may look like a funny way to read
or eat a banana—she had a banana in her shorts and, from the
frequently beamed smile, she was happy to see us. She soon
chucks the banana off-left; the book she keeps, telling us
that Astrid Lindgren, the creator of the Pippi Longstocking
children’s books, said, “It doesn’t matter how you read, so
long as you read.” With her blue-and-white-striped shorts
and top, red wig, and black dots for freckles, Cicilia takes
the mostly very still audience on a tour of a rainy afternoon
in July when a depressed Cicilia rediscovered the Pippi Longstocking
series, beginning an adventure that begins by stepping barefoot
in “duck poop”—“ewwhhhh!” As the adventure unfolds, she rescues
a little white duck from six duck bullies—“yea!”—and discovers
that Mr. Magnus Nilsson (David Bunce, who learned that if
he doesn’t turn off the microphone in the light booth, kids
figure out where the voice of Mr. Nilsson comes from) talks
and moves.
They find pirate gold, pirates, and animals abused in a circus.
They sing some short songs, and all is good, clean fun, except
for the duck poop. Sedvall’s Cicilia gets to try on different
costumes and voices as she encounters different characters,
and there are several moments when she asks for volunteers
but doesn’t take any. Once I’d like a play for children to
actually make good on using children performers, and take
the mad leap of faith that audiences always have to make but
actors, directors, and producers seldom do: Trust the magic
of theater, and audience volunteers onstage will take you
places that you never imagined. Until then, Letters From
a Window in the Sky makes for a nice 78-minute introduction
to Astrid Lindgren’s books.
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