The Shaw Festival Theatre Review: “The Wind in the Willows” invites us to join in and simply mess about

By Ross

The sound of birds and crickets singing their riverbank songs is the first thing I hear and engage with when I walk into the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre. And before anyone has even said a word, before Mole has poked her head out of a cup or Toad has gone careening into trouble, I am already somewhere else, and that place is delightful. Judith Bowden’s mossy world of oversized flowers and mounds of greenery captivates, and suddenly I am peering at the stage through the curious eyes of a child who knows there is probably something hiding behind that hill if only I look hard enough and believe. The Shaw Festival’s The Wind in the Willows, directed and adapted by Fiona Sauder (Bad Hats Theatre’s Narnia), knows exactly what it is doing with that feeling. Based on A.A. Milne’s Toad of Toad Hall, this warm creation invites us to look closer from a place of wonder, and perhaps even to imagine that we might be welcome here. A flower that is clearly not a real flower is a thing of joy, blossoming before us so we all can enjoy and run wild with the delicious theatrical trick of pretending. And I’m all in with both feet.

“There is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about by a river.” – A.A. Milne

Watching a young girl race away from her nurse and disappear among all those mounds of green makes me want to join her. Jaden Kim gives Marigold the kind of wide-eyed curiosity that makes you believe she really can see feelings, and her search for friends becomes our first little expedition into this strange place. Marigold, with her Nurse (Allison McCaughey) running breathless behind her, eventually run off in search of more things to see and find. They leave behind many questions about exactly how they fit into the larger story, but I find that I am already willing to go along for the ride. I know perfectly well that I am sitting in a theatre. I know that the greenery is a set and that the birds and crickets are sounds coming from speakers. I know that what is happening around me is being created by actors, costumes, light, sound, and a wonderfully inventive collection of objects. And it works. It has the glorious thrill of one of those Disney World attractions I loved as a child, when you could sometimes see the machinery if you thought about it too much, but why on earth would you think about the machinery when Mister Toad is taking us on such a fun adventure? Here, the animals drive cars, make picnic baskets for their friends, throw birthday parties, wander through the woods, and somehow manage to turn an ordinary afternoon into an adventure.

Gabriella Sundar Singh (ShawFest’s Major Barbara) as Mole emerges from inside a cup with the kind of alert curiosity that makes you want to lean forward and see what she has discovered. There is such openness in her performance that I feel as though Mole has taken me by the hand and decided that we are going exploring together. And who would want to say no to that? Especially when we are being introduced to Sharry Flett’s Rat. Flett gives Rat a beautiful, protective earthmother quality, the sort of friend who somehow always seems to know when someone needs looking after. Then Shawn Wright’s Badger stomps into the picture with exactly the right combination of crankiness and affection, looking very much like the person who has seen this nonsense before and knows perfectly well that he is going to have to deal with it again. What I love about them is how quickly they feel like a group of friends who have been doing this forever. They know each other, they tolerate each other’s peculiarities, and when one of them inevitably gets into trouble, the others are there. You can practically see the collective thought forming whenever Toad appears: why, exactly, do we keep putting up with this?

Bouncing into the opening, Lawrence Libor’s green-haired Mr. Toad gives them plenty of opportunities to ask themselves that question over and over again. This is a creature who seems to have been built entirely out of enthusiasm, impulse, and the inability to leave well enough alone. His manic energy sends him roaring through the story, including a delightful handheld ‘road hog’ sequence that turns the stage into a racetrack with very little apparent concern for traffic regulations. The other animals respond with increasingly spectacular eye rolls, and I found myself watching their reactions almost as eagerly as I was watching Toad. Taurian Teelucksingh is terrific as Alfred, Toad’s sassy horse, who finds something funny and clever to say at every turn on the road, and makes every little reaction count. Libor throws himself completely into Toad’s chaos, although the sheer relentlessness of that energy eventually begins to make the character feel as exhausting as his friends clearly find him. Yet somehow, these friends keep climbing into the car with him and trying to keep him out of trouble.

What makes this world so inviting is the simple pleasure of watching these animals live in it. They drive cars. They have picnics by the riverside. They wander off into the woods and somehow find themselves caught up in another adventure. They look after each other. Laura Delchiaro’s costumes give each of them just enough personality to make us immediately recognize who we are looking at, while still allowing the actors to bring the animals fully to life. Kevin Lamotte’s lighting turns Judith Bowden’s greenery into a wood that can feel playful one moment and mysterious the next, while Jeff Newberry’s original music and sound keep the birds, crickets, and echoes of this little world moving around us. Sauder understands that none of this needs to be explained. The animals simply live here; they love one another, they get themselves into trouble, and they keep showing up for each other. There is something wonderfully comforting about that.

That willingness to play carries the production through some storytelling that occasionally left me scrambling to catch up. I never entirely understood how we moved from the carriage to the crash in the wild woods, and there are moments when one episode seems to tumble directly into another without giving us quite enough time to work out how we got there. Toad’s obsession with motor cars seems to be the thread we have to race to keep up to, but it also stretches the pacing, particularly when the story settles into the consequences of his latest fixation. The story may occasionally confuse, but the friendships at its centre give the wandering a kind of purpose. These characters may not always know exactly where they are going, but they know who they are going with. A.A. Milne understood the pleasure of simply messing about, and this production is at its most charming when it trusts that kind of pleasure rather than worrying too much about making every turn of the journey perfectly tidy.

Then we arrive at the wild and wonderfully circling courtroom, with a suspicious jury (Matt Alfano) and a judge who can’t seem to stay still. The verdict leads to the prison and finally the escape. Suddenly, everyone is running and chasing. Qasim Khan’s Judge and Graeme Kitagawa’s Usher are wonderfully active and engaging, adding another layer of comic absurdity to the proceedings. And that’s not all, as Alfano, Sara Farb, and Jacqueline Thair gleefully join the parade of Weasels, Stoats and Ferrets, including a birthday party that had me wondering why I wasn’t on the guest list. McCaughey and the rest of the ensemble keep the world in constant motion, as the whole stage is caught up in a wonderfully silly celebration. And even as I found myself laughing at the sheer commitment of it all, a few questions kept bouncing around in my brain. Why are these people helping Toad? Why does everyone continue to participate in his increasingly ridiculous adventures? Perhaps because that is what this little world understands better than anything else. When your friend gets himself into trouble, you go after him. You complain about him. You roll your eyes at him. You may even wish he would stop driving. But you show up. Maybe that is why nobody leaves him behind. He is ridiculous. He is exhausting. He is their friend.

By the time I leaft the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, I found myself wishing I could stay a little longer. I spent the afternoon watching animals drive cars, make picnic baskets, throw birthday parties and race off into one ridiculous adventure after another, but what I really enjoyed was watching them be there for one another. Mole wants to explore. Rat wants everyone looked after. Badger would probably prefer that everyone behave themselves. Toad wants to drive very, very fast. Somehow, they all belong together. And sitting there, I found myself wanting to belong to this friend group too, to climb into that ridiculous buggy pulled by that gloriously cheeky horse, follow them down to the riverbank and see what happens next. Maybe that is the bit of childhood I was carrying in my back pocket when I arrived at the theatre. Not simply the memory of these characters, but the wonderful feeling that somewhere there is a group of friends waiting for you to come and play, and that all you really have to do is join in. Just make sure Toad isn’t the one driving.