In First Stage’s ‘Edward Tulane,’ a rabbit learns how to love
How can a story end happily if there is no love?
That’s the key question being asked in Kate DiCamillo’s “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.” It’s the key question, period. And as adapted by Dwayne Hartford and directed by John Maclay, it’s now receiving a poignant and beautiful rendering at First Stage, where six performers play two dozen characters while providing musical accompaniment.
Edward is an exquisitely crafted porcelain rabbit with bendable joints and real fur, a suit for every occasion and silk pajamas
(First Stage uses seven of these creatures, enabling quick costume changes).
Theoretically, he belongs to an adoring little girl named Abilene, who spoils him rotten. But Edward is quite sure that he himself rules the roost.
Standing alongside Edward, Matt Daniels voices his inner thoughts; in the early going, there’s as much of a disconnect between what he’s thinking and others are saying as we saw from Daniels’ equally solipsistic Snoopy in First Stage’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Edward loves himself. But he cannot love others, and he does not listen.
He’s given a rude awakening when two bored boys on a transatlantic liner wrest him from Abilene and toss him overboard — the start of 297 days at the bottom of the sea.
Yes, he’s eventually rescued; there are still many more adventures to come. But I’ll let you experience their details for yourself.
Suffice it to say that those ensuing encounters give Edward a tour of how the other half lives in Depression-era America.
The question for both Edward and the country involves whether he can ever learn to empathize with those many others — most as lonely and lost as he’s become — who he’s long ignored.
Joining young performers Kamani Graham and Marianna Malinkine in the alternating cast of young actors I saw, adult performers Karen Estrada, Brian Keys and Kat Wodtke bring those others to life, playing characters from a young girl to an old woman as well as a frisky dog and some pesky crows.
They’re all good; I was particularly taken by the always impressive Estrada (proving anew how wide her range is) and Wodtke, who doubles as a slyly humorous narrator — giving us truth but telling it slant, while celebrating how stories offer us a chance to begin again.
Which isn’t to say it’s all peaches and cream. Edward’s journey includes physical violence, wanton cruelty and even death. It’s all sensitively handled by First Stage; the more traumatic incidents play out in the shadows.
Such moments gives this production a welcome emotional honesty and depth; they make its defining question matter all the more. As a certain velveteen rabbit knows, one can’t take happy endings for granted, because love is often fleeting and always a miracle. But as Edward learns, life’s journey can be long and lonely without it.