Miller J. Kraps (right) plays as the title character in Amina Henry’s new adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, directed by Michole Biancosino, as part of the 9th Annual Women in Theatre Festival.
What happens when the adults of a town ignore the wisdom of their children? That’s the haunting question underlying Amina Henry’s new adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Directed by Michole Biancosino, Henry’s play retools the myth, emphasizing the natural virtues possessed by children. Replete with song, dance, and a 10-member ensemble who double as rats, this take on the legend reveals surprising depths.
Annalisa D’Aguilar plays Iris, and Evan Vines is Lame Peter in the age-old folktale originating in Germany during the Middle Ages.
Henry’s version essentially follows Robert Browning’s poem: The town of Hamelin, Germany, is being plagued by an infestation of rats. The Mayor (Nate Kelderman) attempts to resolve the problem by having his citizens set traps and leave poison for the rats, to no avail. Mysteriously, a piper appears, claiming to be a ratcatcher. The Mayor hires him to rid the town of its vermin. After the piper plays his magic pipe and lures the rats to the river, where they drown, the tightfisted Mayor reneges on paying the piper. In retaliation, the piper leads the town’s children away, as he did with the rats. They are never seen again.
The action plays out on Chen-Wei Liao’s intentionally cluttered set. When the lights go up, the stage is littered with scraps of newspaper. Four performers dressed in rat costumes scurry around the performing space, ripping, nibbling, chewing, and pooping, until a church bell sounds and they scatter. Then two children, Iris (Annalisa D’Aguilar) and Peter (Evan Vines), are suddenly seen at center stage, with a makeshift microphone. Iris earnestly introduces herself:
Iris: I’m here with my fellow beat reporter, Peter, who we call Lame Peter because he’s lame. We’re bringing you the breaking news of Hamelin and the breaking news today is … rats! Tell us about the rats, Lame Peter.
Peter: Rats. Rats, rats, and more rats. Back to you, Iris.
Although Peter is preoccupied with the rats, he also broods over his lameness, acquired by tripping over a rat on the stone steps of the church. Or as he bluntly puts it: “It was a rat that done it. A rat ran across my feet.” Ironically, his lameness will ultimately save him from sharing the fate of the other children.
Henry centers the children, who are performed by young adults, in the folktale, and that adds a new dimension to the story, which is typically told from an adult perspective. The children, refreshingly speak the truth about their world, and their natural curiosity helps them to uncover things about the rat plague that the adults miss. Peter, in fact, has concocted a simple but fascinating theory on how the rats happened to take over Hamelin. Or, as Iris reports it with disarming simplicity: “Lame Peter has got an exclusive on the rat situation! . . . The rats that have taken over Hamelin came from the river. When they got here, they just started eating everything.”
From left: Annalisa D’Aguilar, Saran Bakari, Emily Ma and Chelsea Melone in The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Photographs by ClintonBPhotography.
Although Iris and Peter help to propel the narrative forward as fledgling town reporters, and the other children—Ramona (Saran Bakari), Sandra (Emily Ma), and Lu (Chelsea Melone)—bring their own unique energy to pivotal scenes.
The Pied Piper (Miller J. Kraps), of course, is at the core of the story. Although he’s traditionally seen as a symbol of hope for ridding Hamelin of its rats, Henry crafts him more ambiguously. When the Pied Piper realizes that the Mayor isn’t keeping his word to pay him for drowning the rats (“We at the mayor’s office have given it some thought and … we cannot give the town’s hard-earned money to a stranger”), he exacts his revenge by kidnapping the town children to Koppelberg Hill, where he leads them into a cave with no exit.
As the Pied Piper, Miller J. Kraps gives the production’s outstanding performance. Kraps is both charming and shrewd as the eponymous character, especially when he is leading the town rats to their doom. Annalissa D’Aguilar’s Iris, Evan Vines’s Peter, Saran Bakari’s Ramona, Emily Ma’s Sandra, and Chelsea Melone’s Lu are convincing as 10-year-old children, even though each of the aforementioned actors appear to be twentysomething.
“The Pied Piper of Hamelin” is so embedded in our cultural psyche that one hardly would think that any new light could be shed on the classic. But Henry proves that this folktale, in which a promise is not kept, can be revivified by bringing the children to the fore and letting them have their say about the imperfect world they live in.
This compact hour-long show is truly enchanting. Catch it now, or catch it never.
The Project Y Theatre and the Women in Theatre Festival’s production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin at Theatre 154 (154 Christopher St., No. 1E) through June 23. Evening performances are 7 p.m. June 20, 22, and 23; matinees are at noon. and 2 p.m. June 15. For more information, visit witfestival.projectytheatre.org.
Playwright: Amina Henry
Director: Michole Biancosino
Set: Chen-Wei Liao
Lighting: Elizabeth M. Stewart
Sound: Tate Abdullah
