Detroit Arts Live and Onstage: Ray Bradbury classic ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ opens Meadow Brook Theatre season
By VIVIAN DeGAIN
Oakland Press Oct. 11, 2011
Meadow Brook Theatre is celebrating the start of its 46th season with several ways to venerate the old and the new. Cushy new seats in the theater, new hand rails and new carpeting make a tired old room fresh again.
There is also the deep-rooted MBT traditional to begin its season: A spooky October thriller. And MBT’s Artistic Director Travis Walter is fashioning this season with six Michigan premieres, new to Michigan but not necessarily new to the stage.
Walter selected one of his childhood favorites to open this season, Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes.”
Bradbury’s work, originally published in 1962, is a tale of a dark carnival that rolls into an innocent sleepy town – a dark carnival with a freakish power to make the old young and the young old.
The carnival is filled with sideshow characters who display wayward genetics, perverse images from Bradbury’s imagination based on the sad and real experience of exploited people trapped in strange bodies through no fault of their own — and deformed characters who appear normal but have chosen to be monsters.
It’s a tale about the art of deception and the seduction of eternal youth. It takes its characters along a hidden path through a house of mirrors and a carousel ride that spins time and terror.
Bradbury’s classic battle of good versus evil takes place on a magical set designed by Kristen Gribbin.
Her multi-dimensional townscape with layers of perspective is phenomenal. Is it concrete or gauze? Frozen or vapor? There are half-a-dozen building facades, seven doors, four windows, four balconies, several porches, a sewer, a trap door, and a Ferris wheel behind it all.
And the brightest and best talents on stage are the youngsters who are central to the story, two young actors in the roles of two 13-year-old boys eager to grow-up too fast.
Jacob Zelinski plays Jim Nightshade, a boy alone with his mother after death has visited three times and snatched his father and two brothers. Ryan Lynch plays Will Halloway, a blonde boy with a father past 60, a boy who is less daredevil and more the son of a quiet librarian.
Zelinski and Lynch do a first-rate job and act beyond their years. Zelinksi, a freshman at U of D Jesuit High School, brings a rich physical and emotional complexity to his role, one that feels confident and right to the audience.
Lynch, an 8th grader at Hart Middle School in Rochester, is true to the softer, younger character.
Both boys have been on the MBT stage before.
Another amazing performance is delivered by Lisa Lauren Smith as the Dust Witch. Her tricks of voice, dancing and twitching are a treat.
In a cast of 17, adult lead roles star Paul Hopper as Tom Fury, Marty Smith as Mr. Halloway and Aaron Alpern as Mr. Dark.
Fitting to the dark thriller, MBT’s special effects create doom, dread and delight and Bradbury’s talent for a twisted and anxious story is set here in his version of the “1930s in Green Town, Illinois.”
But in some ways, this is a show that needs more work or more magic. MBT needs stronger professional performances from veterans Marty Smith and Alpern – the two adult leads in the show. Perhaps they need more rehearsal. Perhaps at this critic’s viewing at the second show that day in opening week, the actors were exhausted or under the weather. But at times Smith seemed tongue tied or stage stuck. Alpern seemed flat and one dimensional.
There is no doubt that all the elements are in line at MBT for a really GOOD Halloween spook. This critic wants to believe these vets will dig deeper and make it happen for every show in the next few weeks and that the audience will rally to see it live! After all, weak acting scares. Forgetting lines on stage frightens. We will depend on MBT to scratch it’s way back to the top.
Meadow Brook Theatre presents ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ through Oct. 30. Performances generally at 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 2, 6 or 8 p.m. on Saturdays; 2 and 6:30 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets: $30-$39. Tickets at the MBT box office (248) 377-3300 or www.ticketmaster.com. For more information, visit www.mbtheatre.com.
MBT 2011-12 Season
A Christmas Carol Nov. 19-Dec. 23
Nunset Boulevard Jan. 4-29
Mary Stuart Feb. 8-March 4
Spreading It Around March 14-April 8
From My Hometown April 18-May 13
XANADU May 23-June 17
