Five kids and an evil-clown-free 'It'

As her kids prepare for a few days on the beach, Abby Levine, BK '02, laments that the city "is like a prison for children." The disappointing confines of everyday reality rarely last for long in the Yale Children's Theatre, however, and certainly not in Molly Dorozenki's, SM '00, production of Edith Nesbit's Five Children and It. As the five repeatedly realize some of the impossible fantasies of childhood—flying, becoming beautiful, getting rid of that annoying sibling—one cannot help but feel a little relief of one's own. Five Children, in its good-natured humor and turn-of-the-century charm, offers a welcome relief from our own constricting metropolis.

The play sets the five siblings against a bright beach background, where they are free to amuse and taunt each other before running across a self-declared Sand Fairy (Monica Jimenez, SM '02), an ornery, fur-clad beast with the ability to grant wishes. The Fairy finally agrees to grant the children one wish a day, to expire at sunset, despite her obvious scorn, which Jimenez so amusingly portrays.

It doesn't take long before the kids realize the predictable downside: after asking to be beautiful, they are no longer recognizable to their nanny (Cole Jabaily, JE '02), who turns them away in a humorously belligerent manner. The unintended mishaps become increasingly serious, until the play concludes (as most turn-of-the-century children's stories do) with the children all learning their "don't wish for what you don't want" lesson.

While a play with such explicit moral lessons might seem a bit pedagogical, the attitudes of the actors keep it from becoming a sermon. They engage in their bickering with a gleeful delight, as the prepubescent machismo of Cyril (Justin Vaughn, BR '02) responds to the bossy contempt of the oldest sister (Kristin Urquiza, MC '03), producing such admirable insults as "you spiteful brute" and "silly idiot." The play is at its best when the characters jokingly interact in this manner, conjuring up all of those days when we really thought our wishes might be fulfilled—if only our brother would stop acting so "simply donkeyish."

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