Granted, there were stretches in this 90-minute show when an adult might recall reading Bartholomew Cubbins to a youngster and feeling the story drag a bit (when the hat count is in the low one-hundreds, for instance).Wholesale NFL hats But, searching that memory a bit deeper, one also probably will remember reading to a rapt audience. The book itself is a funky challenge to unquestioned authority and a fantasy of the uncanny that leaves with a very happy ending. Those of us with childhood well in the rearview mirror can at least remember hoping that all of life would be just this way.
Toss in sorcerers and their sinister (puppet) felines, wise men bumping ineffectually into one another, and the Yeoman of the Bowman (Gerald Drake), and we have a thoroughly enjoyable, twisted fantasy that speaks to the eerie corners of the childhood mind in the most positive sense.
The show also expresses the spirit of Seuss in its propensity for smoothing over genuinely weird and frightening passages with a unique spirit of fun and tones of the surreal. One of the longer passages of the show takes place in the palace dungeon chamber, where the Executioner (Peter Simonson) is a lonely and forlorn soul — who is nonetheless quite willing to separate Bartholomew's head from the rest of his bodyCheap NBA hats.
Hiram Titus' music is whimsically dynamic, and the seven-piece live orchestra provides a welcome dynamic range of sounds, in numbers large and small. While Greenwald's is the standout voice of a large ensemble cast, the compositions are generally in service to the story rather than knockout opportunities for vocal gymnastics.
And so we embark on an odyssey for Derwin to gain his measure of respect, even with Seuss' finger pressed heavily on the scales of subversion and irreverence. While Seuss' stories bent English into colorful Crazy Straw shapes, here his visual sense (via Joseph Stanley's scenic design adaptation) comes to the fore: all right angles are twisted, and all spaces rendered happily malleable depending on the story's whims.
In short order, Wholesale NBA hats King Derwin is off to inspect his kingdom from his chariot (Greenwald's doleful mugging springing directly from the pages of Geisel). Apparently the primary rule in Didd is that subjects remove their caps in the presence of their liege; unluckily for Bartholomew, some strange supernatural force produces a new cap on his head every time he doffs it.
In the opening scenes of Children's Theatre Company's adaptation of "Dr. Seuss' The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins," young Bartholomew (Braxton Baker) and King Derwin (Bradley Greenwald) deliver separate musical laments about their shared states of boredom and ennui in the off-kilter kingdom of Didd. Fortunately for audiences, this inventive and sharply executed show inspires no such sensation of boredom.
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