Metro Pulse/Backstage/Charlotte's Web

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What:
Charlotte's Web

When:
Saturday, Sept. 28 at 2 and 4 p.m.

Where:
Black Box Theatre

Cost:
$5. Call 523-0900 for more info.

The Actor's Co-op's Charlotte's Web focuses on relationships

by Paige M. Travis

Before there was Babe the Pig and his incredible adventures on the farm and in the city, there was Wilbur the pig, the charming star of E.B. White's 1952 novel Charlotte's Web. Wilbur and his barnyard friends turn the Actors Co-op's Black Box into a real coop (complete with hay and feathers and banjo music) during their Whippersnapper production for young people.

Charlotte's Web is the story of Wilbur, the runt of a litter of pigs born on the Arables' farm. Eight-year-old Fern Arable (Amelia Johnson) convinces her father to let her keep the piglet as a pet and let it live in her uncle's barn nearby. As Wilbur grows up, he gets to know the animals on the farm and makes one particularly special friend, Charlotte the spider.

The adaptation by Joseph Robinette focuses on the importance of friendship between Fern and Wilbur, Wilbur and Charlotte and the other barnyard animals. Animals may have their differences, but they help each other when it counts.

Costumes by Sarah Campbell are so clever. The little lamb (Caitlin Kennedy) wears a fluffy fleece jumper and shiny black Mary Jane shoes. The snarly rat Templeton (Maggie Haun) is dressed in a long black trench coat, a smashed old-man's hat and menacing long black fingernails. Goose (Jennifer Cascio) and Gander (Adam Ellis) wear orange track pants, collars of white feathers, and orange visors. With everyone dressed up and acting his or her part so convincingly, the play seems almost like a Halloween party.

Lucy Hall, who plays Wilbur, wins the award for the most adorable actor in Knoxville. She completely evokes the heartbreaking innocence of the little pink runt. In her pink pajama suit (complete with a curly tail), she smiles with pride and snorts with glee. Her wavering, high-pitched voice captures Wilbur's naïve curiosity, and when he cries, it's just painful! You could just weep having to hear that sweet pig sob. Hall should watch out being typecast however: she played Piglet in the Bijou's touring production of Winnie the Pooh.

White's novel proposes Charlotte as a kind of barnyard intellectual. She is the smartest creature around and a little bit snobby about it too. She has a tendency to criticize the other animals for their ignorance or prejudice. But she is kind to Wilbur, and he loves her unconditionally (even when he learns she drinks the blood of insects). Lauren Houston plays Charlotte in a fabulously sparkly, eight-legged spider suit. Her portrayal is cool and dry, with very little emotion. She seems detached and over-worked, which is appropriate later in the play as the spider nears her final days of life, but Houston's sullen delivery is constant. Besides caring about Wilbur, the next most significant ingredient to loving Charlotte's Web is loving Charlotte herself. And it's hard to care about a spider who acts like spinning a few words into a web to save her friend from the chopping block is a big burden. Perhaps Charlotte's nuanced tone is difficult to capture; Houston proved herself a delightful actress in the Co-op's Hansel & Gretel, which may mean wacky witches are more Houston's style. The youngsters in the audience did respond to her, calling out "Charlotte!" when she first appeared, and making low murmuring sounds of sadness when she tells Wilbur that she won't be going back to the Zuckerman farm.

From this adult's point of view, the most enjoyable parts of the play were appearances by Lurvy (Kent Bilbrey), the Zuckerman's farm hand, and Edith Zuckerman (Mandi Lawson), the part-cowgirl, part-Mary Kay cosmetics model. Bilbrey plays Lurvy as a charming but dim-witted yokel who is thoroughly amazed and a'feared of the "miracle" Charlotte produces in the web. He and Homer Zuckerman (James Francis) reverently put their hats to their hearts whenever they speak of "the miracle." It's a funny touch. For her portrayal of Anita, Lawson has adopted an incredibly thick hillbilly accent and a wide-eyed sassy attitude about everything. Her body language and the little looks she gives other characters are hilarious. The rest of the cast plays their characters more straight, like farmers and their children, without any guile or modern-day cynicism. That simple attitude is refreshing.

The Co-op's production of Charlotte's Web fulfills the book's poignant and unflinching portrayal of life on a farm, and the final scene is a tear-jerker. Jenny Ballard, who usually acts on the Black Box stage, deftly handles the directorial reins of this show. She keeps the pace of the play moving right along to keep viewers of all ages engaged. The show seems to appeal to a range of ages, although I couldn't tell if the littlest ones knew what was going on (or had the attention span to care). But in the context of the Black Box (and with a family-friendly price of $5 per ticket), it's not too early to introduce little tikes to the joys of theatre, especially when it's something they already like, like actors in animal costumes. That never gets old.