Who knew crashing a plane in the Sahara Desert and nearly dying of thirst would result in such beauty?
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was trying to break an air speed record when the near-death mishap happened in 1935 and he emerged from that harrowing experience to write “The Little Prince.”
The much-loved book has been adapted for the stage by Tucsonan Holly Griffith (she also directed) and is the current offering at Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre.
It’s a challenging story to stage — a pilot, our narrator, crashes in the Sahara and while she struggles to fix her plane before her water runs out she comes across the Little Prince from the tiny planet Asteroid 325.
She recognizes him as a kindred spirit when he correctly identifies a drawing she made as a child as a snake that has swallowed an elephant. Grown ups had told her it was a hat, and that drawing was not her forté.
The prince, who has a childlike sense of wonder and curiosity, spins tales for her about his travels. He talks about his own planet, where there are three volcanoes and he spends his days clearing out the destructive baobab trees and tending to his great love, the Rose.
His travels included stops at a planet where there was a king with no subjects, another with a drunk who drinks to forget the shame of drinking, and one where a businessman who sees no beauty in the stars because he is so obsessed with counting his money. In short, the Prince was seeing all that adulthood can bring if we abandon the child within.
Griffith used mime, dance and wildly creative props to bring us on the prince’s trips and to drive home the lessons that make the story such a rich one: the dangers of narrow-mindedness, the need to explore in order to grow and, especially, it is the heart that has the true vision and “what is essential is invisible to the eyes.”
Kathleen Cannon played the Aviator with a sense of wonder not often found in many adults. But the role of the Prince was played by multiple actors, and that was a stroke of genius by Griffith: We are all the Prince, searching and longing. And, too, we all would do well to adopt the generous spirit, the quiet wisdom, the curiosity, and the open heart that defines the character.
The ensemble was made up of Ryuto Adamson, Julia Balestracci, Gabriella De Brequet, Nicole DelPrete, Lance Guzman, Cole Potwardowski and Gretchen Wirges. They all switched roles seamlessly as they took turns playing characters, roses, and even a fox. Feliz Torralba punctuated the story with her original music.
“The Little Prince” is often touted as a children’s story, but as this production illustrates, there’s much it has to say to adults, as well.
