Sheila Dacey

Review of Dallas Children's Theater

I absolutely loved everything about the theater ex...

I absolutely loved everything about the theater except the plot of the play they chose to show to children. This is a Children's Theater, with a room full of children. Why they chose The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is dumbfounding. We were on a field trip with a whole group of 2nd grade children. I had no idea what I was going to experience.

Here's the highlights ... a ceramic bunny is given to a little girl. The audience can hear his thoughts, but of course the actors cannot. The whole plot is about him learning to love and care about others. Which should be a nice story, but the journey is not so nice.

It starts off with a voyage across an ocean where two boys steal a little girl's bunny, playing toss with him over her head & the bunny being tossed overboard, where they make a big deal about the bunny being all alone on the bottom of the ocean. -Bullying & Isolation

The bunny is caught in a fisherman's net & he takes it home to his wife who adores it & talks to it. Their adult daughter comes for a visit, decides her Mom is going senile, steals the bunny & takes it to the dump, abandoning it, where it's eventually buried under more trash. -Theft, meanness & more isolation

A dog finds the bunny and he remains with the dog and a homeless man for years, until a railroad official catches them on a train, assaults the man and the dog & tosses the bunny from the train. -(Railroad) Official Oppression, Assault, Animal Cruelty, more isolation

He's used as a scarecrow with a dark scene about the crows pecking at him, then stolen and taken home to a dying child, who's mother has already died, father is a drunk, a scene where father physically abuses the son and then the daughter dies. -Isolation, Abuse, Poverty, Hunger, Family Violence, Death

Abused boy runs away from home, taking the bunny (that he had made into a puppet for his sister) and panhandles on the street for money. He goes to a restaurant and orders too much food, not having sufficient funds to pay the bill. Owner yells at him and then destroys the bunny by slamming his head on a hard surface. - Runaway, more violence, plus a room full of children who grew up on Toy Story and just witnessed the murder of this bunny by the restaurant owner.

A craftsman puts the bunny back together & puts him in his store for sale. Where he sits for years before a woman walks in looking for a toy for her daughter. She finds the bunny and is speechless. She's the original owner who lost him all those years ago on the boat. So it ends up with them being reunited and him learning to love his owners, vs. constantly complaining about them. The kids LOVED the ending.

My 2nd grader didn't even get the whole plot to the story. She's focused on how sad the story was and was full of questions about all the bad aspects in the story ... things that until yesterday, she had no idea existed or occurred in the lives of other people.

Oh, and a side story, inside the main story ... elderly lady associated with owner #1 tells a story about a selfish princess who didn't love anyone but herself. A man proposes to her, she takes the ring & swallows it, basically laughing at him for being in love. She goes for a stroll in the woods & gets lost. Days later, she finds a house occupied by a witch. She demands that the witch help her because her Dad is the king and threatens the Witch that she'll suffer consequences if she turns away the princess. The witch shows her consequences, by turning her into a boar. The boar princess runs away, finding scouts from the castle who are looking for her. They don't know she's the princess, kill her & take her back to the castle. The cook cuts her open, finds the ring, puts it on her finger & continues to prepare dinner. Everyone in the castle (unknowingly) ate the princess for dinner. Morale: Don't be selfish. Love other people.

How is this appropriate for children? Maybe 5th or 6th grade, but definitely not younger crowds! This play should come with a rating warning that it's not suitable for younger children.