The best fun for grown-ups in this material comes from the exaggerated evil-comic figures of James’s heartless, greedy aunts Spiker (Amaka Umeh) and Sponge (Amy Lee), who exile him to the basement and try to monetize the big peach by turning it into a media sensation. Of particular interest is the contribution of composing team Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote the lyrics for the Oscar-nominated song “City of Stars” in La La Land and created the Broadway hit Dear Evan Hansen, which will likely vie against Canada’s own Come From Away in the 2017 Tony Awards.īut while individual voices are strong, the score doesn’t really pop, in part because the orchestration of the big numbers like “Money on That Tree” is just outside the reach of the eight-person ensemble under Jason Jestadt’s musical direction. He meets them inside a peach that’s been made gigantic by the same fertilizer, and they go on a great adventure when the peach rolls into the sea and starts floating from the U.K. For orphaned James (Matt Nethersole), unlikely kinship forms with a band of insects who grow to human size when he inadvertently feeds them a magic potion. In keeping with YPT’s core values, it’s entertainment with a strong social message: that families don’t have to be traditional to have value. While the material retains some of its capacity to transport young audiences, there’s a spark missing from Nina Lee Aquino’s production that keeps the material more earthbound than soaring. This latter scenario is at the centre of Dahl’s first successful young adult novel, James and the Giant Peach, published in 1961, here turned into a musical for kids 6 years old and up.Ī success at Young People’s Theatre two years ago, it’s being revived with a new cast and creative team. In the off-beam imagination of Roald Dahl, canals are made of chocolate ( Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), little girls are superheroes ( Matilda) and a piece of fruit can grow bigger than a house and fly. Until March 18 at Young People’s Theatre, 165 Front St. Words and music by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, book by Timothy Allen McDonald, directed by Nina Lee Aquino.
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