Review: American Repertory Theater's World Premiere is a Musical WONDER

“Choose kind” may sound like little more than a banal bromide, but it’s also a sentiment that cuts across the grain of much of what divides us today. And as one of the songs in “Wonder” – a moving musical adaptation, with book by award-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl, of R.J. Palacio’s best-selling 2012 children’s novel of the same name, now being given its world premiere by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge through February 8, 2026 – it provides hope for the future.

With its themes of compassion, empathy, and resilience, the story, also the basis for a 2017 feature film starring Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson, follows a boy with a facial difference as he reluctantly moves from home-schooling to the fraught world of a private middle school in search of acceptance and friendship.

Auggie Pullman – affectingly played on press night by Garrett McNally and, at certain other performances, by Max Voehl – was born with a facial difference that has led to his having 27 surgeries. Although surrounded at home by loving and devoted parents Isabel (Alison Luff) and Nate (Javier Muñoz), and older sister Via (Kaylin Hedges), Auggie’s appearance often leads him to seek escape from judgment in a space helmet and the company of an imaginary friend, “Moon Boy” (Nathan Salstone).

Social anxiety and physical and mental challenges facing young people have long provided source material for plays and musicals, from “The Glass Menagerie” to “The Who’s Tommy,” “Mean Girls,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” and more. In “Wonder,” they’re handled with humor and warmth in an uplifting tale set to a catchy pop score by the musical duo Ian Axel and Chad King, the Grammy Award-winning hitmakers (“This Is the New Year,” “Say Something”) known as A Great Big World.

The quick-paced, captivating score moves the story along. Making its points along the way are memorable songs like “Wonder Boy,” sweetly sung by the marvelous Muñoz in a gentle father–son scene, “Ordinary,” and “Change the Way We See.”

Sensitively directed by Taibi Magar (“Night Side Songs,” “We Live in Cairo”), the production features a gifted cast that includes Broadway performers Muñoz (“Hamilton,” “In the Heights”), Luff (“& Juliet,” “Waitress”), Raymond J. Lee (“Groundhog Day,” “Honeymoon in Vegas”) as Mr. Browne, Pearl Sun (“Come from Away”) as Ms. Petosa and Mrs. Albans, Melvin Abston (“Purlie Victorious,” “Death of a Salesman”) as Mr. Tushman, and Salstone (“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”), whose uniformly terrific voices and believable performances help ensure that not one false note is heard in either the book or the score.

The entertaining character work of Abston as the school principal, Lee as the overburdened English teacher and athletics instructor, and Sun as the wacky science teacher add dashes of familiar middle-school humor to the proceedings. But while Salstone warmly brings forward the spaceman that lives in Auggie’s head, a character not seen in earlier iterations, the portrayal is too drippy for full impact.

The younger cast is equally strong, led by the multitalented McNally and including Donovan Louis Bazemore (Broadway’s “The Lion King”) as Auggie’s on-and-off friend and science-project partner Jack, Reese Levine as the pugnacious bully Julian, and Nicholas Trupia as his sidekick Amos. Julian, who sports $400 sneakers and whose mother (Sun, in her second role, as Mrs. Albans) is a major donor on the school’s board, also provides the basis for “Shoes,” an act-two number perfectly delivered by Bazemore about how the students’ footwear reflects their economic backgrounds.

As the mini-Merman-in-training Charlotte, Skylar Matthews is a scene stealer who makes her self-focused character hard to resist. Charlotte sees the world as it reacts to her not as she reacts to it, until her classmates divide into teams during “This Is War” which has the bullies facing off against the good guys. Kylie MiRae Kuioka also provides many laughs as the spirited Summer, and fine supporting work is provided by ensemble members Ryan Behan and Maddy Le.

A subplot involving Via, her boyfriend-to-be Justin (Diego Cordova), and her sometimes distant friend Miranda (Paravi) add the appealing dimensions of teenage angst and young love. With “Around the Sun,” Via tells of how she feels in a family centered on her younger brother, and on “If It Makes You Feel Better,” Miranda, brought up in a broken family, sings of her envy of the closeknit Pullmans.

Music director Ryan Cantwell conducts a tight band with panache aplenty. The choreography by Katie Spelman (Broadway’s “The Notebook”) is good overall, but the all-company numbers sometimes play like holdovers from the long-ago PBS children’s series “Zoom.”

Matt Saunders’s warm-toned scenic design captures every aspect of Auggie’s world from his home and school to the surrounding universe, with lighting designer Bradley King’s Lite-Brite-like blocks providing visual pop through their vivid and varying colors. Linda Cho’s wide range of costumes suit every scene.

It may be based on a children’s story, but this musical “Wonder” has something for everyone.