Children's Theater does justice to Judy in 'Sally'

PATRICK MCGARVEY/YH Even the real kids are awesome in 'Sally Freedman.'

For every teenager who sighed when Jordan Catalano took Angela's hand in the hallway and cried when Teen took over Sassy, there was a preteen who devoured Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. God (if he's there) knows I did. Six times. Being such a huge Judy Blume fan, I was a little apprehensive about the adaptation of her novel Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. Would the Yale Children's Theater do Judy justice? It seemed doubtful. As it turns out, Judy has some cause for concern--not because people are corrupting her work, but because the Yale Children's Theater is kicking her ass.

Sally is a slice-of-life/coming-of-age story that begins when Sally's family moves temporarily from New Jersey to Florida because of her brother Douglas' health. Sally (Lisa Cohen, JE '02) is initially a little whiny, and you wish Ma Fanny (Clara Lacy, ES '02), her extremely Jewish grandmother, would tell her to stop kvetching already. But she wins you over with endearing naïveté and an uncannily Drew Barrymore-like smile. In the aftermath of World War II, all the normal concerns of adolescence are inevitably haunted by the war. Sally's active imagination has her not only dazzling Hollywood but also exposing Mr. Zadovski (Justin Vaughn, BR '02), the kindly old man in her building, as an incognito Adolf Hitler. When Sally and her friends debate whether to play cowgirl or detective, Sally suggests, "We could play concentration camp." It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry at these startling lines.

Sally's beloved father (also Vaughn), whose dentistry practice keeps him in New Jersey, serves as the didactic voice of the play. In the opening scene, he establishes himself with the line, "Every new experience is an adventure." In one of the last scenes he tells Sally, "Some people spend so much time worrying about tomorrow that they don't enjoy today." So he's not the most subtle or original mentor, but he's so sincere that you don't care. Besides, it's children's theater--what do you expect?

The more solemn scenes provide serious relief to punctuate the comedy. Even when Sally's friend, Barbara (Emma Lehrer, a student at West Hills Middle School), confides in Sally about her alcoholic mo-ther, the script and actors impressively avoid sentimentality. And most of the performance is charged with an intelligent humor that Blume herself never approached. Lacy is a comedic gem, portraying Peter Horn-stein, Sally's spastic crush, in addition to Ma "Don't tawk like that to yuh mothah" Fanny. When Peter finally kisses Sally, she coyly asks, "What was that for?" to which Peter responds, "For letting me copy off you on our last spelling test." Look out for future heartbreaker Stacia Brewcyzinski, also hailing from West Hills Middle School, who portrays with enthusiasm both Sally's snotty classmate Harriet and her friend Chrissy from home. In a letter to Sally, Chrissy explains, "You're still my best friend, but until you come home, I'm pretending that Joan is."

The play is a creative, successful hodgepodge of real life, Sally's fantasies, and epistolary enactments. The movement onstage is constantly absorbing. As Sally describes her apartment's bug infestation in a letter, all the other actors take on the roles of creepy-crawly insects. The actors keep the audience involved, to say the least. Suffice it to say that an insect with a blond ponytail grabbed my leg.

Sally's sometimes self-centered immaturity is forgivable, if not utterly adorable. "Don't feel bad that I hate it here," she writes to her father, "because I guess it's not your fault." She concludes her letter to the U.S. government about Mr. Zadovski, a.k.a. Hitler, "Don't put any other detectives on the case, or else you may ruin it," signing off with, "Yours truly, A brilliant detective." Subtle, astute characterization like this will seem natural to the kids and hilarious to the adults.

In the final scene, Sally's letter to Chrissy leaves us with a sense of the journey to maturation on which she is just beginning to embark. Sally sums up what she's learned during her time in Florida. Her new knowledge includes the difference between hydrogen and helium and what it's like to kiss a boy, the latter clearly being much more interesting than the former. She's also begun to consider the advice of her optimistic father, which is essentially, "Don't worry, be happy." The last scene is like the conclusion that your professors tell you to write, which should do more than reiterate your thesis; it should, as a certain professor of art history would say, "instead [leave] the reader with a sense of the intellectual possibilities your ideas have raised." Sally's letter accomplishes this goal, and leaves the audience with the feeling that the possibilities are endless.

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