The Monkey's New Life Plan

The Nightingale
BYU
October 8, 2013

The monologue from the theater to the car went something like this: "When I'm a grown-up I am going to come back and be in that place.  Are you clear?  I am clear on this.  I am going to be one of those people in that show when I am bigger.  I am going to do that!  I am going to be the nightingale!  Or maybe another show.  Or maybe this show with more characters.  And a kid is going to come and say that when she is a grown up she will be in a show too.  I am clear on this.  Are you clear?  I am clear."  So, if I'm clear on what she's saying, my little 4 year old Monkey would like to grow up to be an actress.  Preferably an actress like the one who portrayed the title character in the show we just saw.  And she has already determined that she will, in her adult life, inspire children to follow in her as yet untrodden footsteps.  I love this kid so much!

Actually, this is the second time we have seen the show (she would like us to go a third time but my pocketbook will only stretch so far).  The first time we saw the show, she leaned over to me and whispered as the Nightingale (Nicole Dugdale) came on stage, "Mom!  That's the prettiest girl I have ever seen!"  Here she is, by the way, with the Monkey and her older sister:

The show is a retelling of a Hans Christian Andersen tale and the performances were influenced by the Peking Opera.  Apparently the cast went to China to study with the Peking Opera and research for this show.  Oh, BYU students, I hope you know how lucky you are!  Back in the day, we didn't have such exotic field trips.

It's hard to say what delighted us most about this show.  We were all engaged but in different ways.  My older daughter could not stop laughing.  She loved the goofiness of the Emperor (Jordan Nicholes) and found each character's symbolic physical gesture hilarious every time he or she did it (especially Clayton Cranford's Young Man's vocalization).  The Monkey loved that too but was especially entranced with the visual element.  The costume designer (Donette Perkins) deserves kudos for designing costumes that were simple and looked easy to move in but that also had eye catching details that created visual interest.  The Monkey especially loved the fake mustaches and beards.  I wish I had taken a picture because the glorious thing about them is the fact that they were fake in a way that was very conscious of its fake-ness.  They were not fake facial hair; they were a theatrical indication of facial hair.  I loved it!  I want my own for our next family picture (though I do still love our own crochet beards)!  Also, the Nightingale was plain in her clothing but had a demure and yet beautiful headdress--a perfect representation of the Nightingale herself.  I really liked the Narrator's (Cossette Hatch's) Chinese style makeup with the striking red eyes too.  She was the character whose makeup most approached what we think of when we think of Chinese theatrical makeup, which made her stand out and visually highlighted her role as the Narrator.

The entire cast was strong but the three that stood out to me were the Narrator (Cossette Hatch), I-Ming (Jennifer Bozeman) and Death/Emperor of Japan (Noah Kershisnik).  The Narrator caught the children's attention quietly and managed to keep them as she slipped in and out of the scene easily.  Her performance never seemed forced and she really felt like the audience's advocate and confidante.  The actress playing I-Ming had a similar ease to her performance that was very engaging.  Her very face seemed to transform as she moved from character to character.  My favorite performer, though, was Noah Kershisnik, who had such focus and precision that it seemed as if nothing (short of a police raid of the theater) would draw his attention from the core of his character.  He was 100% present every time he stepped on stage and so each of the characters he portrayed was vibrant and compelling.

The whole experience was delightful.  50 minutes is the perfect length for a children's show (no intermission to navigate!) and the inclusion of Chinese dialogue was interesting without being overly foreign (plus we all got a kick out of saying the few Mandarin words we know to the Chinese Narrator (Esmeralda Veda) after the show).  The Monkey absolutely loved meeting the cast after the show.  We were the very last people to leave the first time we saw the show and just about the last people to leave the second time.  She didn't quite know what to say to them but was over the moon that they paid attention to her (special thanks to Jennifer Bozeman for being so funny about the cute shirt she was wearing.  She retold that story over and over again.  "She thought I was a giraffe!").  Thank you, BYU, for a wonderful evening!