Review: THE LITTLE PRINCE at Theatre Passe Muraille

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” This classic line from THE LITTLE PRINCE encapsulates both the achievements and pitfalls of Landon Krentz, Theatre Passe Muraille and Inside Out Theatre’s co-production of a play based on the deceptively simple 1943 novella that’s beguiled children and philosophy majors for more than 80 years.

Deaf artist and storyteller Krentz has reimagined Antoine de St.-Exupéry’s beloved tale into an all-ages “dynamic fusion of physical theatre, Visual Vernacular (VV), American Sign Language (ASL), breathtaking vertical dance, and immersive projection design.” Visual Vernacular is a Deaf storytelling technique created by Bernard Bragg, an “art in Deaf language” that blends gesture, sign language, expressive body movements and mime to create a cinematic effect for the audience and celebrate Deaf culture.

Krentz’s company of Deaf actors explains to us, in a pre-show, captioned portion, that their production is “rooted in the language of hands, eyes, and hearts” because the Little Prince is “learning to listen with the heart.”

The heart involved in this production of THE LITTLE PRINCE is obvious, with engaged, animated performers showing audiences (both hearing and Deaf) the joy of finding common ground and connection with others. The show also soars, literally, when Krenz as the titular character is carried up and away on an aerial rig, bouncing in front of projections of small alien worlds and paper airplanes.

Unfortunately, however, unless one is very familiar with the source material, what is essential about the story may remain invisible to the eye.

I always assumed that I had read the classic novella in high school, because I had friends who felt passionately about it. Upon seeing the show, I realized that I had instead merely consumed the work's general vibe and concepts via osmosis (I quickly rectified the situation, reading it on the way home). Without a strong grounding in the work’s presentation of metaphorical and allegorical concepts, one may find that much of Antoine de St.-Exupéry’s philosophical dialogue does not entirely translate to a purely visual milieu without absolute crystal clarity of concept.

Able to parse the basics, I still sometimes found myself lost, despite the passionate, expressive cast; Ralista Rodriguez is particularly fun to watch as the adult aviator/book’s narrator who discovers the young prince after getting stranded in a desert. One issue with presenting a simple story whose simplicity belies the depth of its writing is that, absent the thoughtful phrasings, one is left with a relatively straightforward but disconnected chain of events.

Certain adaptation choices by Krentz further muddy the waters. Instead of presenting a single narrator/point of view character (in the book, the aviator), Krentz splits the role between another adult actor (Hayley Hudson) playing the child version of the narrator in a framing device, and Rodriguez as the adult version. This confuses the continuity and perhaps unintentionally indicates that the target audience for the show is children. It also feels odd to split the aviator into two parts, portraying a total separation of child and adult, instead of letting the character (as in the book) rediscover the child within.

Visually, there are plenty of interesting moments. Christopher-Elizabeth’s projections of the strange new worlds, with illustration design by Alessio Convito, are reminiscent of the trippy 1973 experimental sci fi adult animation film Fantastic Planet, particularly in a scene where hands of various hues rise out of the ground. Some narrative vignettes also translate more clearly than others, such as the conceited Social Media Influencer (Ebony R. Gooden), whose videos the Little Prince interrupts before he’s downvoted into oblivion. Adriana Bogaard’s costumes effectively outfit the 1940s aviator and the prince, with abstract ways to denote a rose or snake; Bogaard also cleverly converts the book’s fox into our ubiquitous local raccoon (Ali Saeedi).

My favourite moments were often small, such as an extended sequence where aviator Rodriguez uses Gooden as the plane to take off, Gooden’s hands artfully becoming the sputtering propeller before she flies away. As well, Gooden’s rendition of what resembled a wind-up doll who gets over-wound and collapses in horror might be the most striking visual of the evening, even if the context for this isn’t completely clear.

Speaking of being able to see, the sightlines for the show present something of an issue. Instead of primarily taking place on the raised playing space, the action begins at the lip of the stage, as actors come out through a large round doorway in the scrim that stretches to block off the rest of it.

While there are levels between the stage and the ground, rocky platforms sticking out at all angles (set also by Bogaard), director Suchiththa Wickremesooriya sets many important moments in the show low on the floor, close to the front row of seats. This is wonderfully intimate for the people sitting in those chairs, but is admittedly quite difficult to see from the second-last row of the relatively small TPM mainspace house, even on the centre aisle. Because the show’s visuals are so important, giving these interactions some height might help the entire audience connect better with the action.

THE LITTLE PRINCE represents a commitment to accessibility in theatre that we should see more of on Toronto stages, and is full of little joys. It’s the big picture that needs further consideration, so we can more fully see its vision with both eyes and heart.