Down by the Riverside at Imagination Stage

Dapper Panama hats make a big comeback in musical production of the 1908 classic children’s book The Wind in the Willows.  While Toad’s obsession with the newly invented motorcar is central to the plot, it’s the costumes and the river set that are the stars. 

Automobile drivers are outfitted with dusters to protect their clothing and goggles to protect their eyes; women wear hats anchored down with thick veils and men wear yachting caps and gloves.  The animals are not wearing animal costumes but bear more subtle signs of their breed, such as the Toad’s jacket having lily pads splashed across it.  Katie Touart’s clever costume design includes Badger wearing a Norfolk suit, common with hunters (the irony being that the badger is a favorite prey) and Toad’s duster being covered in tire tracks (a nod to his atrocious lack of driving skills).  

The river is the hub of activity. Actors sit on the floor wearing long, shiny aqua gloves and using lulling hula-like hand movements to represent the fish in the water, very successfully conveying the movement of the river, accompanied by rushing water sound effects.  The various animals make their homes along the river’s banks, and Barge Woman (Tia Sherer) makes a brief but dramatic appearance passing through in a bright vessel offering her wisdom.

Scottish essayist and author Kenneth Grahame wrote the story, set in Victorian England, for his only and ailing son Alistair “Mouse” Grahame.  The current production is adapted by Richard Hellesen, with music and lyrics by Michael Silversher, and directed by Imagination Stage artistic director Janet Stanford.  

Sasha Olnick, who just finished a run as Mozart in the Round House Theatre production of Amadeus, stars as the most entertaining Toad.  Doug Wilder, in Imagination Stage’s The Dancing Princesses last season, is Badger. Vaughn Irving, last seen by Imagination Stage audiences in Disney’s Mulan, is Rat, and Christopher Wilson, most recently in Junie B. in Jingle Bells, Batman Smells!, is Mole. 

Friendship among these lead characters is the backdrop for all the action. Badger, Rat and Mole fear their friend’s folly with the motorcar will get him in deep trouble, and that fear is borne out when he helps himself to a car left unattended and is hunted down by the police and brought to trial.  When sentenced to 20 years in prison, his friends kick into rescue gear.  They send a woman (Maya Jackson) in with a washerwoman’s disguise for Toad to don, and he successfully slips by the guards.  Again the costumes jump to the forefront; the purple bonnet and apron that constitute Toad’s disguise are simple but hilarious.

The acting and singing in this production is energetic, though even for adults in the audience there are whole numbers or scenes where you can’t understand what’s being said—whether that’s because of the English accents or lack of enunciation or projection isn’t clear.  Only the lively Toad is consistently understandable both in prose and song.

The Wind in the Willows is the final show in Imagination Stage’s 2010-2011 season.  While advertised as being for ages 4 and up, there was a lot of fidgeting in the young audience at the weekend matinee I attended.  Age 6-8 at least might be more appropriate both to understand what’s going on with the story and for the nightmare potential of the frequently spooky Wild Woods and the bad-guy, bullying Weasels (menacingly portrayed by Matthew Schleigh and Phillip Reid). Parents of younger children in particular would do well to run through the plot highlights if they haven’t read the original book, and help kids identify the characters. 

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Imagination Stage, 4908 Auburn Avenue, Bethesda.  Box Office: 301-280-1660, www.imaginationstage.org

The Wind in the Willows, through August 14. Tickets: $10-$22.  Kids can meet the cast after every weekend matinee, and there will be an ASL interpreted performance July 17 at 4 p.m.