In its continuing quest to open the world to the children who will inherit it, Metro Theater Company has explored racism, fear and most of the Seven Deadly Sins, all produced on a level where understanding is both simple and difficult. Simple because events and philosophies are explained on a basic level; difficult because so-called grown-ups still are struggling to turn the theories into action .
“The Giver,” which opened over the weekend at the Edison Theatre on the Washington University campus, to run through June 23, is a science-fiction story with George Orwell overtones, written by Lois Lowry in 1993 and winner of the Newberry Medal for Excellence in Children’s Literature. Eric Coble adapted it as a play in 2005.
Director Carol North, who has been doing this for Metro since 1980 and who is the company’s artistic director, shows a calm, steady hand as she looks at a family living in a world that is peaceful, cooperative, polite–but strange and subdued. The son is 12, the age at which children are given the assignments they will carry out for the rest of their lives. They may be trash collectors or teachers, cooks or craftsmen, but there is no choice and no appeal. Society may be peaceful, but it is colorless; everyone dresses in drab gray; book jackets are the same.
Jonas, played with poise and understanding by Mitchell List (who alternates with Christian Probst in the role), is named to be the Receiver of Memory and sent to study under the Giver, nicely portrayed by a white-bearded Nicholas Kryah. He holds all the secrets dispersed before “The Sameness” became the standard of behavior and turned everything gray, including the book jackets in the Giver’s library.
Although the ending is rather predictable, this is a good play for children of, say, upwards of nine. Jonas questions, and keeps questioning, and demands truthful answers and does not rest until he gets them, which probably is a reason that it’s also one of the books most challenged by groups who consider it unfitting for children to read or study. That’s an instant classification as excellent, since “The Giver” joins such classics as “Huckleberry Finn,” “Tom Sawyer” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” on that type of list.
Children–and adults, too–must be taught to question, not to accept pat answers, and that’s what “The Giver,” provides, on several levels. Good story, well-presented with solid technical values in the set by Dunsi Dai, lights by John Wylie and costumes by Lou Bird.
The Giver, presented by the Metro Theater Company, will be on stage at the Edison Theater on the Washington U. campus through Jan. 23
—Joe