Green daze with music

Sophistication? Swagger? Sexiness? This is environmentally conscious children's theater?

REBECCA ROSENTHAL/YH This is how you do the doggy paddle.

As improbable as it may seem, Adventures in Terraleauferia manages successfully to mix innocence, political rhetoric, and extraordinary musical flair. The joy of watching Terraleauferia does not simply lie in the satisfaction of catching the jeux de mots. You don't just sit back and chuckle quietly at the lines that sail above the heads of the bright-eyed kiddies. You lean forward. You laugh. You swing. You actually groove to the jazzy original score, composed by Phil Gorman, TC '01.

Terraleauferia follows two kids and their wacky Grandma Rose as they travel through Terraleauferia—the magical, animistic land of Earth gnomes, Wind fairies, Fire spirits, and Water sprites. Earth, Wind, Water, Fire: anyone familiar with Captain Planet knows the lineup. Heart, of course, lies in the goodwill and social conscience of curly haired twins Sam (Elizabeth Hammond, ES '04) and Andy (Arthur Lewis, TD '02). As the twins travel through Terraleauferia, they learn of the dreadful environmental destruction of Earth. Besides learning responsibility for Earth, the kids must also save Grandma, who, alas, has been kidnapped by the pirates.

The show is admittedly slow to start. Crazy Grandma Rose (Eleanor Ainslie, DC '02) seems more out of touch than wildly eccentric; the opening songs, while enthusiastic, lack some spark. But all that changes when Grandma and the kids are literally whisked away, sucked into Terralaufleuria through a portal in the washing machine. The scene works because of a great transitional song which combines the infectiousness of a Tide commercial with a swinging melody line and simple but exacting harmonies. The song is clear, earnest, and complex—as refreshing as the rinse cycle.

Unlike a great deal of musical theatre, the score of Terraleauferia avoids recycling the same formula over and over again. Although Gorman's band is essentially a jazz quintet, the score experiments with an ambitious and complex range of music to varying degrees of success. A rocking jazz number ("Coming To Get Grandma!") and a mock-scat song (as a chorus of pirates looks for buried treasure in Tupperware containers) are great fun, while the Water and Air numbers fall flat.

And the stand-out characters are unforgettable. Ed West, ES '02, plays a hilarious talking rock; Anthony Weiss, ES '02, is a delightful pirate and ruler of the air. Sure, the singing is not perfectly polished, the instrumentals sometimes steal the spotlight, and the rushed environmental rhetoric is a bit over the top. But Terraleauferia delivers more than you might ever expect from a children's show: terrific humor and a fantastic musical experience.

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