Who knew that 5-year-olds would be ripe for a little Brechtian theater experiment?
At least that's what "Elephant & Piggie's We Are in a Play!" felt like during Friday night's opening at Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis.
The one-hour, one-act musical, which kicked off the company's season, starts out being somewhat remote from the audience. Then, late in the performance, actors Christopher Michael Richardson and Shinah Brashears, who play the pachyderm and porky best friends, suddenly discover they have an audience. They promptly break the fourth wall, inviting us to sing and clap along to Jerry Whiddon's bright, colorful staging.
That interactivity — why couldn't it come sooner? — ignites a connection to a show whose energy and zest had been misfiring before.
"Elephant & Piggie" is something of an odd duck, as you might gather from its cumbersome title.
Young audiences in the Twin Cities are used to different fare than this import from Washington, D.C.,'s Kennedy Center, where it was described as a jolly vaudeville romp. That is not to say that it dumbs down to reach its audience, but it's just not as sophisticated as, say, CTC's similarly themed "A Year With Frog and Toad" or even "Diary of a Wimpy Kid — The Musical," which is pitched to older audiences.
"Elephant & Piggie" takes stories from Mo Willems' popular children's books and sets them to music by Deborah Wicks La Puma. The action revolves around friendship.
Gerald the Elephant is big and burly with a heart of gold and a need for companionship. He frets that he's going to lose Piggie, who is lithe and willowy with lots of confidence and a prickly sense of humor. She reassures him that they're friends even though, at the moment, she's gotta go (to the bathroom).
