Bad Hats’ Narnia is huge-hearted and Muppety – and packs a surprising emotional wallop

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• Title: Bad Hats’ Narnia
• Written by: Fiona Sauder and Landon Doak
• Directed by: Fiona Sauder
• Performed by: Belinda Corpuz, James Daly, Landon Doak, Sierra Haynes, Matthew Novary Joseph, Matt Pilipiak, Jonathan Tan, Amaka Umeh, Astrid Van Wieren, Jonathan Corkal-Astorga
• Company: Bad Hats, Soulpepper Theatre and Crow’s Theatre
• Venue: Soulpepper Theatre
• City: Toronto
• Year: Runs until Dec. 28

Critic’s Pick

You could say that Bad Hats Theatre, one of the loveliest, most earnest performance companies in Toronto, has a fair amount in common with the Muppets.

Both were ostensibly first conceived for children, but over time have morphed into cultural touchpoints for adults willing to commune with their inner child. Both are the result of a staggering amount of craft – manoeuvring those Muppets isn’t easy, but neither is remixing classic children’s stories into brand-new musicals performed by roving troupes of actor-musicians.

And for both, the fun is only just beginning when the rodent puppet – either Rizzo the rat or, in Bad Hats’ case, Reepicheep the mouse – comes out to play. (Or, uh, scurry.)

Narnia marks the latest in Bad Hats’ string of musical experiments. Their previous Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland were huge-hearted and innovative, offering modern twists on the beloved stories set to inventive, guitar-driven scores. Both showed that the Hats were willing to do a lot with a little, but with a considerable impact – their shows offered a style of musical theatre no less polished than the big-budget musicals put on by larger theatre companies, but with heaps more heart.

Narnia, co-written by playwright Fiona Sauder and composer Landon Doak, makes all the sense in the world for the Hats to tackle. C.S. Lewis’s iconic books are considered public domain in Canada – so there are no pesky intellectual property rights to finagle – and Narnia is all but synonymous with the power of imagination, a theme the Hats have revisited time and again in their work.

When we meet the Pevensie children, they’re in the care of a kooky, rhyming professor (Come From Away’s Astrid Van Wieren), whose enormous house seems to be spring-loaded with secrets. There’s a war going on, we’re told – Narnia doesn’t shy away from the fact that geopolitical conflict is an inevitable, terrible fact of life – and the siblings will be spending the foreseeable future surrounded by dusty staircases and mysterious portraits.

Before long, Lucy (a spunky Belinda Corpuz), Peter (a standout Matthew Novary Joseph), Susan (a poised Sierra Haynes) and Edmund (a simmering Doak) decide that they’re going to make the best of things by playing hide-and-seek. After all, what else are mysterious old houses for?

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What follows is about what you might remember from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with a never-ending coat closet that soon gives way to the frozen depths of Narnia, a fantastical land stuck in an eternal winter at the hands of an evil witch (Amaka Umeh). It becomes clear that the Pevensie children might be the only people who can interrupt the witch’s reign – but how could four children possibly be up to the task?

It helps that they’re not alone: A reasonably helpful fawn (Matt Pilipiak) helps Lucy adjust to the realities of her new environs, and two absurdly delightful beavers (Pilipiak and Jonathan Tan) are more than ready to welcome the family into their dam.

In some ways, it’s a surprisingly straightforward adaptation from Bad Hats – the story’s just about untouched, save for some creative doubling that sees Aslan the lion resemble someone the Pevensies know quite well.

But of course, it’s the way the story’s told that matters – and to what effect. Sauder’s production is playful yet elegant, and makes great use of Soulpepper’s exposed Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre – the professor’s antique staircases evolve into a veritable playground for the Pevensies and their mythical friends to climb. (Shannon Lea Doyle is the set and costume designer.)

As well, Sauder’s Narnia has a few tricks up its sleeve – about halfway through, the show darkens a shade, and morphs into a gorgeous, profound meditation on grief. Van Wieren, equal parts grandmotherly and regal, becomes as much a conduit for hard-hitting life lessons as she is a narrator. Her interactions with the children are simple yet pack a surprising wallop – after all, she offers, grief is an acquired skill, and an experience far from limited to young people.

But it’s Bad Hats, so those tearful moments don’t last long: They’re interrupted by that magnificent mouse puppet (voiced and operated with gusto by James Daly), or a jaunty song about coats. (Doak’s score is catchy, vibrant and well-arranged, with fabulous blends of clarinet, piano, guitar and bodhrán that soar to meet the complex emotional needs of Sauder’s book.)

There’s not much that Bad Hats’ Narnia doesn’t get right: Its blend of Amelia Bedelia-style logic with that timeless, Muppet-y humour more than lives up to the Hats’ promise that the work will resonate with audiences of all ages. And, what the heck, it’s Christmastime: I don’t think there’s another musical in Toronto that would benefit as well as this one from a preshow, marshmallow-topped hot chocolate from the Soulpepper lobby bar. (Just don’t count on Aslan to clean up the inexorable spills with his magic.)