Seussical the Musical
R.L. Davis Auditorium, Texas School for the Deaf, through Aug. 10
Running time: 1 hr, 25 min
The Cat in the Hat – he is the one who waltzed uninvited into some kids’ house when their mom wasn’t home and cheerfully proceeded to trash the place, right? If that’s your recollection, too, then you might not recognize Theodor Geisel’s bewhiskered agent of chaos when he first appears in Seussical the Musical. Oh, he’s still sporting that trademark tall striped hat, but instead of tempting the show’s young protagonist JoJo to, I don’t know, play Frisbee with the dishes, he rather responsibly encourages her to use her mind and imagination. For this embodiment of every kid’s id to be so grounded and nurturing feels a tad out of character – it’s as if he’s fresh out of rehab and performing some kind of community service.
Now, that’s no reflection on Jose Villarreal, who’s cast as the Cat in the Zach Performing Arts School production of Seussical; he injects some of the feline’s trickster spirit into his performance whenever he pops up, morphing amusingly into a blustery judge here, a lightning-tongued auctioneer there, not to mention a blind piano player, W.C. Fields, Groucho, and even the Cat’s Seussian second cousin, the Grinch. But the fact is, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, the musical’s creators, felt some need to have a tour guide for this musical mash-up of several Seuss books and assigned that job to the good doctor’s most famous figure, even though it cramps the blithe unruliness at the heart of the character.
It’s indicative of the show’s desire to play it both ways: to be whimsical in the true Seuss spirit and teach a lesson, to be a faithful retelling of stories for kids and a Broadway musical that speaks to grownups. True, Geisel himself could strike a balance between, say, silliness and moral instruction, but that was part of his genius. It isn’t so easy for everyone else, and the more opposing impulses you try to balance, the harder it gets. Folding Horton Hears a Who!, Horton Hatches the Egg, Gertrude McFuzz, and McElligot’s Pool, plus bits of other books, into one play is tricky enough, but shoehorning them into a single narrative is complicating matters that work best when left simple. Case in point: the bloated film version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas vs. the small-screen take animated by Chuck Jones. Not that Seussical is a Hollywood-sized misfire, but sometimes it tries to take on too much and, like poor Gertrude McFuzz and her unfortunately overgrown tail, has trouble taking flight.
But this is all sounding too Grinchy by half. To be fair, Seussical gets a lot right, and the same goes for this production. Director Wendy Bable sets a playful tone that fits the material and sustains a spirit of fun as we bounce through the various stories. And apart from a few elaborate effects (Gertrude’s elongated tail, a school of shiny fish in McElligot’s Pool), the staging stays simple, allowing us to focus on the characters and use our imaginations – oh, the thinks we can think! – to conjure those fantastic Seussian landscapes. Similarly, Derek Whitener’s costumes don’t try to duplicate the characters’ original looks but use vivid colors and fur accents to evoke their cartooniness. (Noellia Hernandez’s Mayzie, dripping hot-pink fringe and feathers, looks like a showgirl doing some Vegas version of Disneyland’s Tiki Birds revue.) And the performances boast a kind of primary-color brilliance, too: Hernandez’s Mayzie, brimming with vanity and sass; Amani Dorn’s Sour Kangaroo, with a permanent pinch in her pouch; Alyssa Muir’s JoJo, all energetic sunshine.
Still more pleasing is that the show has its heart in the right place. That’s most apparent whenever Horton is onstage. In both of his adventures, as scripted by Seuss, the hapless pachyderm is determined to protect someone small and vulnerable, no matter what hardships or ridicule he faces. Eric Vera projects that admirable resolve here and repeats Horton’s mantras – “A person’s a person, no matter how small” and “An elephant’s faithful, one-hundred percent!” – with such open-faced sincerity, you know this is an elephant you can trust. We get why Gertrude wants to be his lovebird: Horton is true-blue, even if he’s gray. Seeing a beloved character like that portrayed with such warmth and sensitivity is a lovely thing – the kind that can make even a curmudgeonly critic’s heart grow two sizes in a day.
This article appears in July 18 • 2008.