Hare Today
If we’ve learned anything from Bravo’s Inside the Actor’s Studio, it’s that every Streep and Depp has had to sell a turkey or two. Bad actors can ruin good material — for example, say, a quarter of what I’ve seen in my theater-going life — but a good actor can make the slightest bonbon rich and filling.
Such is the case with local actor Jessalyn Kincaid, whose performance as the title character in Theatre for Young America’s The Velveteen Rabbit transcends what adults expect from a grown-up gallivanting in floppy ears and a cotton tail. A lesser talent would be smothered by the cute and cuddly costume. Kincaid offers something more.
The crux of Gene Mackey’s adaptation of Margery Williams’ classic children’s book is that the titular stuffed animal wants nothing more than to be cute and cuddly, but the world is a darker place. What happens when you’re not the cutest plaything in the nursery? Kincaid’s mix of pain, patience and resolve vividly animates a social pecking order, even if it’s confined to a lone toy box.
Mackey’s version, a story within a story, opens in a library, well-designed by Vaughn Schultz, with stacks of books bearing only red or navy-blue bindings. A fussy but well-meaning librarian (Sheryl Bryant) is tidying up when the closing announcement comes over the speaker. The last patron is a boy named Johnny (Sinuhe Viramontes), who has the dream job for a passionate young reader: He gets to stay after hours and put up the venue’s annual rabbit display.
His uncle Maximillian (Rick Holton), who’s supervising the installation, is also a quirky magician. (Holton plays him two cashews shy of a nut case, recalling Frank Morgan’s portrayal of the wizard in The Wizard of Oz.) Williams’ story begins when the trio unpacks Kincaid’s big, stuffed rabbit, whose status and self-esteem is about to be disarmingly rattled.
It seems that the child (also played by Viramontes) who receives the bounty of gifts that includes the bunny is more interested in the other loot. Cue the inferiority complex. This is old news to a shabby toy horse (Holton), whose day in the sun has long since passed. (You can see the seams through his matted coat.)
In the best scene in the show, the rabbit asks the horse what it will take to engage the kid, asking, “When will I be real?” And the kicker — “Does it hurt?” — strikes a mournful tone. It reminds everyone who’s been picked last for kickball of that bitter pill.
The kid eventually warms up to the thing and starts sleeping with it. Realness achieved! Yet, true to Williams’ time (she was born in 1881), he comes down with scarlet fever, and, post-recovery, all the toys he has touched are exiled to a pending bonfire. Because Kincaid has so spiritedly animated the toy, that turn of events becomes kind of horrifying to ponder. The cute bunny is about to be torched, and the sight of Kincaid half in and half out of a garbage bag could be troubling to sensitive little ones.
To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim’s “Comedy Tonight,” there’s a happy ending, of course, which left me largely unmoved. Still, the concept of humanizing toys has a weird, out-of-body appeal. And it certainly hasn’t hurt Pixar’s bank balance.
