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A spider your grandchildren can love
"Charlotte's Web' at the Arden (1st review)
Merilyn Jackson
After a recent performance of Charlotte's Web at the Arden, the actress Emilie Krause agreed when I suggested that her role as Fern, the farm girl who names and saves Wilbur the pig, was a good antidote to her role as a gang-rape/murder victim in Our Class at the Wilma last fall. Here, the 23-year-old played her fresh-faced young self.
Under Whit MacLaughlin's direction, the entire cast gave marvelous performances. But my seven-year-old grandson, Shea, agreed with my cast favorites: Anthony Lawton as Templeton the rat and Sarah Gliko as a dark yet darling Charlotte the spider.
David P. Gordon's set is spare and soaring, and there's plenty of interaction between the cast and the audience. When volunteers were solicited from the audience to come hold a rope, Shea's hand shot up like a red flag at a raceway to join a half-dozen other kids on stage for a few moments.
I was as enchanted by the stagecraft and the message as Shea, and so I think were all the other dads, moms, uncles and aunts and grandparents in the audience. MacLaughlin's direction skirted the intergenerational variances just right. But Shea also agreed with me: We won't be giving up on our favorite food— bacon— any time soon.♦
To read another review by Dan Rottenberg, click here.
Under Whit MacLaughlin's direction, the entire cast gave marvelous performances. But my seven-year-old grandson, Shea, agreed with my cast favorites: Anthony Lawton as Templeton the rat and Sarah Gliko as a dark yet darling Charlotte the spider.
David P. Gordon's set is spare and soaring, and there's plenty of interaction between the cast and the audience. When volunteers were solicited from the audience to come hold a rope, Shea's hand shot up like a red flag at a raceway to join a half-dozen other kids on stage for a few moments.
I was as enchanted by the stagecraft and the message as Shea, and so I think were all the other dads, moms, uncles and aunts and grandparents in the audience. MacLaughlin's direction skirted the intergenerational variances just right. But Shea also agreed with me: We won't be giving up on our favorite food— bacon— any time soon.♦
To read another review by Dan Rottenberg, click here.
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