Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is the kind of enormous staging challenge that must have seemed irresistible to the Aurora Fox’s trio of directors Charles Dean Packard, Jen Orf and El Armstrong, whose considerable individual specialties lie in scenic design, lighting and sound, respectively.
But in their “swing-for-the-fences” stage adaptation of Bradbury’s epic 1962 coming-of-age battle of good meets evil — of “Our Town” meets “Macbeth” — clear and compelling storytelling comes in a distant fourth.
This staging is loaded with cool tricks, anchored, so to speak, by the twirling, angled carousel upon which riders famously grow old or young again. It’s a marvelous piece of stage machinery. There’s a trapeze and a fire-eater, and water flows from the strangest places.
But the logistics of executing that stage magic interfere with evenly flowing storytelling. The pacing is deadly, scene transitions are clunky, and the novel’s keen allegories and characters are fuzzy. This staging establishes a requisite atmosphere of strangeness, but not an ongoing sense of danger and urgency.
If you haven’t read Bradbury’s horror story, you might be hard-pressed when it’s over to accurately summarize the story you’ve just seen.
It’s about Midwestern boys Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway, whose 14th birthdays will fall one minute on either side of Halloween. They are seduced by an ominous traveling carnival and its collection of side-show freaks. Little do they know its Faustian leader, Mr. Dark (Jude Moran), preys on people’s desire to regain their youth. A crazy old lightning-rod salesman morphs into an adorably bearded tot. A school teacher reappears as a young girl.
He’ll vie for Will’s and Jim’s souls in a climactic battle with Will’s librarian father, Charles Halloway (James Nantz), whom we know to be vulnerable because his every word is a rumination on his own lost youth.
But for all that’s going on here, from that time-bending carousel to the mirror maze to the evil Dust Witch to The Amazing Mr. Electro, there’s a surprising lack of kinetics in this staging. Most of the 22-person ensemble serves as mere window-dressing, as planted bits of human scenery that steal focus from the story.
In the end, this story must be carried by two 13-year-old boys, and that’s an unfair burden to bear when they don’t seem to have gotten the attention they’d need from their directors to successfully do so.
Nantz fares best as the caring old dad who gets wise to Mr. Dark’s sinister game. But Mr. Dark doesn’t get enough stage time to really define his malevolent place in Bradbury’s world order. Secondary characters that are so vivid on Bradbury’s page are vague on this stage. The Dust Witch comes off like a brief interjection from “The Lion King.” Mr. Cooger’s rampage through Miss Foley’s house, blamed on the boys, is confusingly told. Mr. Dark’s fate is not effectively communicated.
It’s a shame because this is an archetypal story that taps into our most primal desires and fears. The story’s deep, underlying sadness for those freaks who fell prey to their vanity and are now eternally imprisoned by it is lost.
The ending is an unashamed testament to the power of happiness to vanquish evil. It’s a clarion call to live in the present, and embrace the joys of everyday life. But that doesn’t make for a visceral stage experience if you’re left scratching your head.
An enormous amount of work went into this staging, and good for the Aurora Fox for taking a trippy ride on the merry-go-round. But, it pains me to say, you’re better off reading the book.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Something Wicked this Way Comes” ** (out of four stars)
Dark fantasy. Presented by the Aurora Fox Theatre, 9900 E. Colfax Ave. Written by Ray Bradbury. Directed by Charles Dean Packard, Jen Orf and El Armstrong. Starring Miles Goeglein, Andrew Fisk and James Nantz. Through Oct. 31. 1 hour, 55 minutes. 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. $20-$24. 303-739-1970,
