Adam Theater’s mission is essentially to present plays for an audience of second graders, that is, seven-year-olds. A large order.
This past weekend the Cambridge theater company started the new run of “Library Lion,” a “play with music” adapted from a book of the same name. The show on Sunday had an even younger audience, mostly children still needing to hold on to mom’s hand — most of them were probably around four years old.
Here’s what we saw and heard: an excellent small cast who could act, sing and dance and in other ways navigate around a set resembling the interior of a public library.
The story starts slowly: a pair of pre-teens, boy and girl, enter and start looking around as if they don’t know where they are. A gatekeeper, Mr. McBee, (books in, books out) appears and starts singing at some length about the importance of obeying the rules of the library, all meant to maintain silence and decorum, which the pair are blithely and unknowingly breaking. After introducing three other characters who identify themselves through song and dance, a life-size lion walks casually onto the premises, scaring the daylights out of the assembled. This lion isn’t scary; it’s lovable, and very quickly becomes their friend — except for the gatekeeper, who wants the lion to leave and the sooner the better.
At this point I was asking “where is this going? What’s the narrative?
And the only answer I can find is that there was very little plot as such. As least, not for seven-year-olds, who delight in a more traditional story form: main character sets out on some kind of journey, meets an obstacle and overcomes the obstacle, often through magic. This has been what some call the time-honored skeleton story, a structure meant for the newly sentient and hungry to see it all come out okay in the end: “Wizard of Oz,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” etc.
This observation reinforces my belief that very young children don’t respond to abstractions — in this case the breaking of rules — the same way they respond to people they identify with who start out in trouble and end up safe and happy. It was odd in a way. When things got dicey on the stage, several adults in the audience laughed; the children were mostly silent. Not a good sign.
My immediate reaction afterward was I wouldn’t take my great grandchild to this show. But I have spent my long career focused on story structure, and while this play’s didn’t gel, there were many things I enjoyed about the production.
I think my great grandchild would be thrilled with the lion, the star of the show. An amazingly accurate replica of the real thing, except in this case “walking” with the help of three puppeteers who manipulate the hairy creature with immense skill and total silence. You can’t help watching it slink across the stage; you almost want to take it home with you and introduce it to your cat.
Other performances were also stellar. I especially was impressed by Robert Saoud, the actor who played Mr. McBee. Saoud is an accomplished singer, warm and authoritative, and makes his character shine. I loved the enthusiasm and energy of the ensemble. The actors were effective in their roles, but the audience was not on their wavelength.
This company is far removed from what we tend to think of as theatre for children. There’s no pandering or talking in funny voices. The dramatic “effects,” mostly accomplished with torn up pieces of paper, are terrific, as is the lighting and everything else connected with the technology of theatre production.
The sole problem with the production is its haphazard narrative structure, so pronounced that you could almost imagine the scenes being rearranged in a different order without making much difference. That’s not good for theatre — or for that matter any other written form.
At the end, after the lion is briefly exiled and welcomed back. With Mr. McBee showing signs of emotional growth and understanding (that is, more tolerant of infractions of the laws of the library) the children in the audience got up, grabbed their moms’ hands and left the theatre.
I left with them, somewhat annoyed that I couldn’t understand what it was all about. Maybe it was too much of a leap for me to believe that a four-year-old or even a seven-year-old could tell you which rules can be broken, and which cannot. Even we adults can’t seem to be able to do this.
Library Lion
Weekends Jan. 10 to 25, additional performances Monday Jan. 19.
Calderwood Pavilion, 527 Tremont St., Boston
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.