Long before Harry Potter took on Dark wizard Lord Voldemort and made J.K. Rowling a supremely rich mortal, there was Madeleine L’Engle's 1962 fantasy novel “A Wrinkle in Time,” in which heroine Meg Murray challenged dark forces gaining on the universe.
The 1962 story has been a favorite of young adult readers -- and some not so young -- for five decades. Theatrical Outfit has just opened John Glore's stage adaption of L’Engle's novel. Here's a primer on the show:
The story: Increasingly brave Meg (Emma Jackson), her little brother Charles Wallace (Andrew Crigler) and high school basketball star Calvin O'Keefe (Lowrey Brown) travel through time and space in hopes of rescuing Meg and Charles Wallace's dad (Mark Cabus). A brilliant government scientist, he's being held captive by "IT," a robot-like being with a huge brain that has banished individuality on the planet Camazotz, turning its inhabitants into Stepford wives-husbands-children in this ultra-'60s adventure.
The back story: "Wrinkle" was rejected 26 times by publishers concerned that the fight against darkness would be too difficult for young readers before Farrar, Straus & Giroux finally put it out in 1962. It won the Newbery Medal for children's literature in 1963 and the publisher has released a 50th anniversary edition that includes the author's acceptance speech.
Outfit artistic director Tom Key, who met the late L’Engle in the early 1980s while performing his breakthrough "Cotton Patch Gospel" in New York, recalls her as "absolutely fearless," possessing "‘ET'-like eyes that just seemed to take in everything."
"Her spirit was so clear-eyed and awake," Key recalled, "and what was wonderful was that it was so embodied in her characters. Like Meg in ‘A Wrinkle in Time' and as her parents, she was so curious."
The author in her own words: In her Newberry acceptance speech, L'Engle said, "Today our children receive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun ... that they must be guided into creativity. These are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for ... the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying, dissipating universe, that we can help our children avoid by providing them with [quoting a story on Newberry creator Frederic G. Melcher] 'explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly.'"
A special meeting: Key had read "Wrinkle" in his late 20s and it became a favorite book. Then he and his wife Beverly met the author when L'Engle and her husband, TV and stage actor Hugh Franklin (best known as Dr. Charles Tyler on "All My Children"), invited 25 young couples from a fellowship of actors, painters, dancers and musicians to their home for a dinner celebrating their 50th anniversary. L'Engle herself made spaghetti and there was plenty of conversation on the menu as well. "They were wonderful," Key recalled.
What Key relates to in the book: "I believe, as in all great and enduring fantasy, she is using that particular genre in order to reveal a picture of ultimate reality through a fresh set of symbols and metaphors. So that even though this is an imagined galaxy to which they travel and it's an imagined theory of how to travel through time, it rings true.
"The metaphor of this darkness that's trying to take over a planet [is powerful]. And I love Calvin's response when Aunt Beast [an otherworldly character on the planet Ixchel that has helps nurse Meg after difficult travel] says, 'Your planet [earth] is dark too,' and he replies, 'Dark-ish.'"
Onstage
“A Wrinkle in Time”
Through May 6. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays; 2:30 p.m. April 25; 11 a.m. May 2 and 4. $16-$32. Balzer Theater at Herren’s, 84 Luckie St. N.W., Atlanta. 1-877-725-8849. theatricaloutfit.org.
