Charlotte's Web Unspun: A Brave New Spectacle of Hollow Theatre

Alberta Theatre Projects is staging Charlotte’s Web from November 26 to December 29th at the Martha Cohen Theatre. Adapted from E.B. White’s classic for young readers, the play brings the story to life on stage. The story anthropomorphizes animals, it draws on the classical heritage of Aesop’s fables, encouraging us to see ourselves in the struggles and lives of non-human characters. The story follows the travails of a young pig named Wilbur, saved from death by a warm-hearted girl, Fern. Wilbur, after being re-homed in the Zuckerman farm, finds himself befriending an array of animals, including a set of haughty sheep, a scheming rat, earnest geese, and Charlotte, a sagely and kind spider. Wilbur sees a maternal figure in Charlotte and is saved from becoming a pork chop through the altruistic and clever interventions of Charlotte. What is striking about the narrative, is that Charlotte uses her wit and intelligence to save Wilbur from a premature fate, even though there is no apparent advantage in her doing this. This raises the age-old philosophical question, why do we perform acts of kindness when there is nothing in it for us? And more especially when we are certain of becoming the subject of adversity in our doing good. Wilbur is the ultimate symbol of innocence, unlike the other animals, he does not seem to have much of a distinct purpose besides being fattened for human consumption, though this theme is not deeply explored in the play, his material utility is certainly in question. What real and enduring value does he lend to the farm besides being the subject of a human being’s dinner plate? During the unfolding of the narrative we see that he lends social utility to the farm, he fosters camaraderie and affection amongst the animals, enriching the emotional and relational world of his environment. This though is not the result of his interventions in his environment, quite the opposite, he always seems to exist in a state of heightened vulnerability, but it is through the interventions of Fern, but more specifically Charlotte, that he transforms from a figure of vulnerability to one of collective admiration. This is all the more remarkable considering that he has no special skills or gifts, he is not even an outstanding pig. Charlotte’s wisdom suggests to all of us that the vulnerable amongst us can hold profound importance, not through the material utility of their contributions but through what they socially evoke in us. For the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, vulnerability is never a weakness but a demand, it is through the vulnerability of the other that we are compelled to act selflessly. Charlotte encompasses this Levinasian ethic, she places the moral weight of her responsibility on Wilbur’s sheer existence, not on his utility or what he can give her. In fact, according to Levinas ethical relationships are fundamentally misaligned, those who are vulnerable will probably never be able to match up to the sacrifices made on their behalf, yet it this imbalance that defines the intrinsic purity of ethical action.  

Stories such as these are seen as especially effective for young audiences because animals, stripped of social features like race, class or gender, serve as symbols that transcend socially constructed identities. Fable-like stories often suggest that there is a moral framework that is singularly significant, one could argue that it is a form of moral essentialism, the belief that no matter what community one belongs to, there are trans-historical values that transcend them and bind all communities together in a shared ethical or moral understanding. It echoes the belief that the universe is imbued with natural law and that universal principles are stitched into the very fabric of human existence, regardless of social class, race, ethnicity, or orientation. Is this done at the expense of recognizing social plurality and the fact that worldviews around human values are, in many instances, distinct? Are we universalizing the human experience at the expense of specificity? A hyper-critical take on Fabulistic theatre is that it is an inherently lazy form of theatre because by using animals to essentialize the human experience (even though animals possess their own subjectivity and complexity), it bypasses the intricate realities of human specificity. The otherness of human beings is compressed into reductive ideograms through dramatized fables. To put it more starkly for those with an interest in interpretations like these, fables like these might be critically constructed to be forms of false consciousness, the idea that stories like these reinforce social and cultural dogmas at the expense of asking ourselves from very, very difficult questions.  However, one could argue the opposite, that it is by using animals as symbols that the complexities of the human experience are neatly distilled into universally accessible forms of understanding and reflection, rendering moral questions more understandable to audiences, more particularly children. Seen through this lens, the simple abstractions in Fabulist theatre are strengths and not weaknesses, that they essentially enhance the ethical quality of our collective consciousness, and the values of loyalty, sacrifice, and heroism are explored away from the complex interferences of caste, colour, and creed. Sometimes, plays like these create shared mythologies around universal values that transcend the political complexities of our lived reality. It is through these values that we are called to reconsider the fundamental virtues that bind us together. I must admit that I veer towards the latter perspective, which is why I looked forward to seeing this play.

The play, as a piece of children’s theatre, came across as vaguely engaging enough for a very young audience, but the characters were unenriched and came across as flat representations rather than multidimensional figures. The inner lives of the characters gave way to a tableau-like presentation of some of the central characters, it is, of course, no easy feat to balance the need for a presentation loud enough to attract the interest of a young audience and characters with some sort of enduring gravitas. One could call it a sort of depth-delight paradox, holding creative tension in a state of balance between immediate entertainment and emotional resonance. The former was done with efficiency (far too much for its own good) but the latter was missing entirely. Some of the scenes between Charlotte and Wilbur had a lot of potential for performatively exploring these themes, but they were passed over in facile and brusque fashion. The pacing was sharp and quick throughout the play, but it seemed far too rushed, the lines were being spoken out at a rapid pace without taking the time to build the emotional tone or complexity of key scenes, almost like painting a picture without ever really allowing the brush to linger on the details. Unfortunately, this impatience results in a very bland setup and an end without any significant dramatic effect, the death of Charlotte. The rush to keep the narrative at breakneck speed sacrificed moments of profundity that could have resulted in a very powerful emotional crescendo. The story was not given enough room to breathe or build emotional layers, and it is those layers that are supposed to structurally augment the humour and joyousness on stage. The world presented to us in this production hovers in an emotional uncanny valley, where the gestures of emotional depth and humanity are, on the surface, superficially present, but there is an underlying sense of hollowness. This leaves the narrative bereft of any authentic engagement, stranded in a threshold of estrangement, completely devoid of Levinas’s idea of vulnerability or reflection. There is a very superficial harmony in the world presented to us in this production, and it is almost a form of sublime horror, a world so stripped of its humanness that it is terrifyingly unsettling in its artificiality. I would expect Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (Dystopian Novel - a society where emotion, and freedom are sacrificed for sterile conformity and pleasure) to have this production played on repeat for a young audience being indoctrinated into a world expunged of authentic human emotion.

The complete lack of emotion in the production is ironic, considering the play is based on the absolute vulnerability of Wilbur, but there is no real recognition of this at a performative or inter-subjective level between the characters. I am unsure as to how something so thematically pivotal to the play was left completely unexplored or unaddressed at an artistic level.  

Children are intuitive, just because they are young and (hopefully) sheltered from the volatile consternations of human life does not mean they cannot grasp the depth of genuine human emotion. Underestimating their ability to do so is a diminishment of their incredible intelligence.

The performances were true to the form of the artistic vision that I have critiqued above; they were rambunctious and sharp but hollow and outstandingly uninteresting. As always, full marks are accorded for the commitment and sincerity of the cast; those qualities are usually never under question in these reviews. What is usually the subject of these reviews is whether any of the characters in a play being reviewed are memorable and say something interesting to us. In this production, the answer must be a categorical and resounding no. This is the unfortunate result of a creative vision that paid far too much attention to the surface of the narrative and not enough time to excavate the deeper strata of the narrative, where authentic emotional resonance and subjective richness might have resided.

The production values were very creative, the set, the lights and the costumes were outstanding, showcasing the inventive intelligence and hard work of the production team.

At the level of a review, the play is wholly uninteresting and memorably forgettable. It is a production that is fit for an assembly line in a Brave New World - an absence of soul and built for a world where meaning and emotion are trite afterthoughts.

Final Rating 4.5/10