Monday, July 28, 2008
A&E Georgia Shakespeare presents Tom Thumb The Pretty Good
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:12 PM
Saturday I saw Tom Thumb The Great, this year's show in the Family Classics Series of Georgia Shakespeare, playing through August 2. Local playwright Margaret Baldwin's world premiere offered a fleet, irreverent take on Tom Thumb, the diminutive fairy tale hero.
Directed by Clint Thornton, Tom Thumb creatively addresses the logistic challenges in a story that involves besieging giants, a kingdom of normal-sized people and a protagonist (Derrick Ledbetter) the size of an iPhone. For much of the play, Ledbetter scoots around on a bucket on wheels, remade to look like the thimble, to represent his smaller stature. Some scenes in the middle of the play use an impressively articulate Tom Thumb puppet about the size of a Ken doll, while huge costumes worthy of Carnival parades put the giants onstage. Shadow puppets frequently fill in the narrative blanks, and it's to the credit of the cast and crew that they can switch between so many outfits and performance styles without leaving the audience hopelessly confused.
Adults will be amused at the jokes that evoke Monty Python: the silly king (Bryan Mercer) wants to find the Holy Grail, while digs at the Age of Reason shares some of the themes of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (which, come to think of it, also featured giants). The frequently rhyming, pun-drunk script tends to go for quantity rather than quality in its jokes, but some hit off. Tom compliments a spider on its work, and it says, "I've been taking classes in web design." The play builds to a reasonably valid "be yourself" theme, but nevertheless proves too busy and overloaded — some plot points and running jokes don't go anywhere, while other points, like Princess Huncamunca's (Ally Carey) feminist-style assertion of identity, could use development.
Spencer G. Stephens amusingly plays the mean queen as a drag queen, which might call for some parent-child explanations afterwards. I told my five year daughter that sometimes in shows, men will play female characters as a joke. (Later we'll deconstruct the social aspects of gender imagery.) My daughter said, "Like in Bee Movie!"
I said, genuinely confused, "Did they do that in Bee Movie?" And she reminded me of the scene when Jerry Seinfeld's Barry B. Benson visits the honey farm beehive, where the bees make honey in labor camp-style conditions. One oppressed bee says that they're working for the queen, and points to a photo on the wall of a masculine-looking bee with five o'clock shadow and a wig. Barry says, with typical Seinfeldian delivery "That's not a queen, I think it's a man!" (Or words to that effect.) It's actually one of the best laughs in Bee Movie, but I'd completely forgotten it.
(Image courtesy of Georgia Shakespeare)
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