THEATER REVIEW: It’s not every day you walk into your school’s theatre and see a large peach gaping down at you, little did I know that the theatre department was going all out this year for the production of “James and the Giant Peach.”

From the minute I walked up to the ticket booth, I was instantly greeted by various characters who were incredibly dedicated to holding their parts. Not one of them broke character and continued to talk in their assigned accents throughout the time I waited in line. After waiting several minutes, the doors finally opened and I was pleasantly surprised with how much detail had went into just the hallway leading into the theatre. The walls were lined with bright orange paper with curls of orange streamers hanging from the ceiling to resemble the inside of a peach which I found to be a nice added touch.

I was able to grab a comfortable seat right in the middle of the theatre with a perfect view of the stage which was excellent, I was glad I arrived fairly early because the seats did fill up quite fast. I was however a little disappointed that the show seemed to take forever to start up, because I found myself checking the time at several instances before the show actually began.

The story however completely made up for the fact the show started late. Immediately the story took off and I was immersed into James’s world. To summarize the story a bit, James—played by junior Dean Foreman—became an orphan after his parents died in a tragic rhinoceros stampede accident. He was taken in by his two aunts who absolutely despised him and didn’t take proper care of him. One day as James worked his chores, a mysterious man came to him to give him a recipe for a special potion including some strange green objects inside a paper bag. As James walked home, he accidently dropped the bag, spilling out the contents which caused a great large peach to grow from a tree nearby. James climbed into the peach to reveal several bugs grown to life; while he interacted with them the peach began it’s journey toward the ocean where it would soon land in America.

This play was incredibly well done and most of it had to do with the characters and set design. Whether how big or small of a role an actor had they made sure to commit to it a hundred percent. There was definitely never a dull moment in the story because of how well the characters were portrayed. One of my favorites included the earthworm played by junior Zane Fincham. Zane’s character was incredibly difficult to play, seeing as how he was a blind earthworm who didn’t have the greatest ability to move inside of his costume, he did extremely well. All of his dialogue was completely personalized which truly made his performance memorable.

The set design was also pretty amazing. Not many theatre departments could have pulled the production off because of all the details that needed to go into this play like the design for the peach. The peach is an extremely large part of the story and my biggest concern was “how are they going to be able to pull that off?” I was not disappointed when I walked into the theatre to see the design of a large peach as a backdrop and painted on the floor as well. I hadn’t been expecting such a vibrant design and I was definitely surprised to see such a beautifully designed set.

However, while this play had many good aspects, not everything was perfect. Although the lighting and sound had been good for most of the play I noticed some of the sound cues were often a second or two late as well as the lighting cues. It really brought down the intensity of the story to expect to hear a sound or see a change in lighting and it took a few seconds to finally get there. I also had a few problems with the transitions of the scenes. Whenever a scene was finished I was often left unplugged from the story because of how sudden the transitions were, and it also wasn’t pleasant to see the characters running around in pure terror in the darkness. Maybe if the transitions had been a little slower and quieter it would have fixed the problem. Also there was one character that I was semi-confused with was the character the Silkworm. The character was never really properly introduced during the play which caused some confusion to me as to why it was there and what the role served. Given this production took to the stage three weeks to the day after the huge fall musical, all this can be understood.

Overall, “James and the Giant Peach” was a great turn out for me. For just $5, the entertainment was top quality and had me in giggles the entire night. The actors’ performance was very highly thought of, but some improvements could be made to sound and lighting details. For now, I give this show four out of five stars and am proud to say I have still yet to be let down by an Oak Park theatre production.

For a news story on this topic, read here: https://northmennews.com/3509/entertainment/peach-raises-2000-for-charity/#sthash.kAOgw7Zo.dpbs