THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 1, 1995 TAG: 9511300144
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 28 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater Review
SOURCE: Montague Gammon III
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
The musical ``Narnia'' will probably entertain children with its enchanting fantasy of talking animals and its cartoonish conflict between the good lion and the evil witch.
Name recognition and the need for children's entertainment should guarantee this show's popularity. Yet despite some innovative and effective staging, it simply is not up to the standards one expects from Regent University Theatre.
Those standards include polished performances and professional production values. One also expects literary worth of a high order from anything by C.S. Lewis, and this script has veered noticeably from the original books by the great Christian scholar and critic.
For one thing, Lewis did not write in cliches, especially in cliches cast as rhyming couplets. For another, it is more than difficult to separate the story Lewis wrote from the religious foundation he used.
This musical holds to his basic plot. Four British youths find entry into the magical world of Narnia through an old wardrobe in an even older home. There they become embroiled in a battle between the forces of good, led by the lion Aslan, and the forces of the evil White Witch. Aslan is an analogue for Christ, allowing himself to be sacrificed to spare the life of a sinner and then returning from death for a final triumph.
Whatever one believes, Lewis' own religious underpinnings remain central to his writings. ``Narnia'' places a heavier emphasis on the broader idea of cyclical renewal by which winter gives rise to spring and new life blooms from the corpses of that which had gone before.
One could argue that this same cycle gave rise to the story of Christian rebirth, but the scriptwriters' attempts to secularize C.S. Lewis sacrifice the very soul of his writing in an attempt to find popular appeal.
What is important is not how one approaches Christianity nor whether one even likes the Christian content of the original children's stories. What matters is that adaptation for the musical stage allowed talents less adept than the original writer to meddle with, and muddle, the work.
Oddly enough, the musical high point of the script is also the clearest expression of our philosophical shift, so it may simply be the reliance on Saturday morning super hero vocabulary that hampers this script.
Lucy, one of the four humans, leads the company in a hauntingly lovely dirge for the slain Aslan called ``Field of Flowers.'' It is a moment of rare lyrical beauty, reaffirming the talent available to Regent's productions.
Lucy is played by Susan Pang. Her sister Susan is played by Sandra Jacobs, her elder brother Peter by Darren Warren and her younger brother by Kendall Tuttle. All four carry off their roles well. Some of the other performers are afflicted by ``Capital A Acting,'' from the school that regards obvious effort as being the same as worthwhile achievement.
That is to say, Aslan looks stern. Villainous characters laugh maniacally. Mr. and Mrs. Beaver walk stiffly because they are elderly and so forth. One might point out that portraying the infirmities of age as being necessarily laughable is a decidedly uncharitable and hence un-Christian approach.
Set against the artificiality of some performances is the highly effective use of Oriental, stylized staging that director Laurie Godfrey has introduced to handle scene shifts, battles and other events that cannot be reproduced realistically without being awkward.
Costuming the residents of Narnia in Oriental garb is a clever way to set apart this magical world from the real world that the four humans have left behind. It also allows the actors to represent rather than to impersonate the animals, fauns, dragons and similar creatures. Since a human actor is going to be recognizably human, no matter what make up or costume is worn, this was a wise decision by director Godfrey.
The idea of staging the large battles as abstracted dance numbers was more than wise; it was just about brilliant. Whether Godfrey or choreographer Michelle Hoppe, who also plays the White Witch, came up with that thought, both deserve praise. There is no way to make a group combat look realistic so why try? Why not make it strikingly visual and convey the sense, rather than the literal action, of the fighting? It's a lesson anyone who wants to stage Shakespeare, or any other author who wrote big battle scenes, might take to heart.
Beverly Cordova Dunne was the primary choreographer, the set design was by Tom Ryan and the lighting design by Eric Hardie. Music director Christopher Malendoski also composed some incidental music for the play. ILLUSTRATION: WHEN & WHERE
What: ``Narnia,'' book by Jules Tasca, lyrics by Ted Drachman,
music by Thomas Tierney.
Who: Regent University Theatre Arts.
When: 8 p.m. Dec. 1, 2, 8, 9, 15 and 16 and at 2 p.m. Dec. 3 and
10.
Where: Regent University, 1000 Regent University Drive.
Tickets: 579-4245.
by CNB