The Midnight Train Crossing

So before I get into the play that I saw, I want to express my disappointment in the fact that there were no cookies during intermission. First Stage *always* has cookies during intermission... I was disappointed.

Anyway, now onto the show.
It turned out to be a musical, which is always a plus, and it also turned out to be a very funny musical, which was an even bigger bonus. It sort of made up for the lack of cookies...

Like all First Stage shows it was double cast, we saw the Northwind cast.

For a quick outline of the plot... An old man tells a young girl the story of an old woman who lives in the mountains and makes quilts. She doesn't sell them, she only gives them away to people who need them. People try to buy them, but she always turns them away.
There is also a king who is trying to find happiness, so he gets people to give him presents. Pretty soon the only thing that he does not have is a quilt from the quiltmaker. Since he's still not happy, he decides that's what he needs.
But she won't give him one unless he gives all of his other things away first. He's rather mad about this.

Throughout the show, the little girl (Clarise White) and the old man (Michael Duncan) lurk in the background, and are occasionally acknowledged by the characters in the story. The old man is dressed in a ragged cloak and pulling a cart. He says that he has been traveling for a very long time.
Michael Duncan by the way, is another of those actors that seems to turn up in nearly everything local that I go to see. He was last in Anne of Green Gables

The set was pretty. It had a few rocks on the sides of the front of the stage. At the rear of the stage was a structure which is hard to describe. It had a stone bridge bridging these two platforms that also looked like rocks. The Quiltmaker does live in the mountains after all.
But the cool part about the set was that there were random quilt patterns all over the place, on the floor, on the walls, on the trees... A definite decorating theme.

As far as the cast goes, it's going to be a bit difficult to list off some of the performers that I liked because no one had an actual name.

The best characters in the show, hands down, were the soldiers of the king. I don't know who was who, but according to the program they have the names of Kelley Annesley, Trevor Olds, Shanna Sweeney and Danny Well. That's only four, and I know that there were actually six, but no one else is credited as "solider"
They had the best moments in the show as they all ran around answering to the whims of the King in rather amusing manners. This group did a lot of physical comedy, as they tumbled around the stage, and crashed into each other.

They sing a sort of marching song whenever they are sent off to do something. When it's something that they aren't really fond of doing, like arresting the Quiltmaker, they say that in their song.

They had a lot of great moments, and here are just a few of them.
They were passing the task of who was going to tell the King that the Quiltmaker hadn't given him a gift yet. The one on the end said that it wasn't his idea, it was the person next to him, who said it wasn't her idea, it was the person next to her... and so on down the line.
Another great scene with the soldiers was when they were helping the king get ready for bed, and they were passing his crown around, throwing it to each other before the king stopped moving long enough that they could set it down on his head.
The king also summons them, waking them up, so they all report in wearing their pajamas. Then, when they get their orders to march out, since they are all half asleep, they walk into each other.

The Quiltmaker was played by Liz Baltes who I have seen before as Gertrude McFuzz in their production of Seussical a few years ago. Her performance was very good, as she was rather un-phased by everything that happened to her. She wasn't impressed when various and assorted people came by to try to buy quilts from her, and she wasn't impressed with the King, no matter what he did to her. (He chained her to a cave with a bear in it, and he put her on a tiny rock in the middle of a lake)
She was a bit nicer to the King than to some of the others though, she told him what he had to do in order to get one of her quilts - give his possessions away. For everything that he gave away, she would add a square to his quilt.
She had a very nice voice when she sang, although she didn't really blend well with the rest of the song styles. She was just really operatic and the rest of the singers in the cast were not.

The King was played by John Maclay who I am sure that I have seen in other things...
He did an excellent job as being the "bad guy" of the show that didn't really have a bad guy. He never came across as evil, even when he was threatening the Quiltmaker, he was just coming across as a brat.
He had a great song though, where he was singing about all of the things that he was getting as presents. I can't remember any of the lines from it, because the whole thing was impressively fast and had lots of lists in it.

One of my favorite scenes involving the king was when he got separated from his guards and went up to the little girl to ask if she had seen his guards. (They were sitting down on the other side of the stage) He says that his soldiers aren't very smart and they wear funny pants. Actually the only reason that they were the funny pants is because it amuses the king to see them wearing funny pants.
Then he asks the girl if she has seen them.
She just points off to where they are sitting.
King: "You know... that would have been a good thing to know thirty seconds ago"
Since clearly the guards heard him making fun of them...

Another good scene with the King was when he had finally given up on trying to force the quiltmaker to make him a quilt, and was finally ready to listen to her. They were sitting next to each other on what was supposed to be a tree branch. He had to "climb" the tree to get up to her, rather than taking the stairs.
He looked so wonderfully sulky when he was listening to her. Sort of like he knew what she was going to say, and he knew that she was right, but he didn't have to like it.
There was a reoccurring theme in that he had a hard time saying the word "Gift" or "Give". The quiltmaker was coaching him through it.
So he'd say something like "A g-... a gi-... a giiiiifffT" (with the emphasis on the "t")

As I had mentioned before, the King tries to threaten the Quiltmaker into making him a quilt in two different ways. First, he has his guards chain her to the wall of a cave which has a sleeping bear in it. When the bear wakes up, he will eat her, or something.
It gets rather cold that night, so the Quiltmaker curls up next to the sleeping bear for warmth and sleeps through the night.
The King, on the other hand, can't sleep.

The bear was played by Lee Becker and he was fantastic. The costume was great too... he had a bear head over his own, but you could still see the actor's head, and he had claws that extended out past his real fingers.
He wakes with a growl and the Quiltmaker comments that he's probably usually cranky in the morning, especially since he has no pillow. She offers to make him one.
The bear is touched by her kindness, and during a song and dance number, he says that he's so lonely. Everyone is always afraid of him because he's a scary bear.
So he breaks the chains of the Quiltmaker and she uses her shawl to make a pillow for him.
Then they have tea. And that's how the king finds her, sitting in the bear's cave with a tea cup.

The walk to the bear cave was another amusing scene with the guards. They were talking about what they expected to find there... that the quilt maker would be dead, torn to bits... with blood and guts and body parts and organs all over the place. And then one of them faints while another one is sick. It was funny.

The King's next threat is to take her to an island in the middle of a lake. A tiny island, just big enough for her to stand up in, so that when she gets too tired, she'll fall off the island and drown... unless she agrees to make him a quilt first.
This bit was kind of cool, they had some blue fabric stretched out across the stage that some of the people moved around to make it look like waves.
But she escapes because she helped a bird, which called someone else (it's not entirely clear who or how) to get her to shore, into a big tree. Which is where the conversation between her and the king that I mentioned before takes place.

So the king discovers that he gets a very good feeling from giving away his presents to children. (Starting with the little girl that is listening to the story) He decides to load everything into a cart and go on a journey, giving everything away.

Out of everyone in the cast, the king got the most costume changes. He started off with a sort of royal looking outfit with a cape, and then he changed to a military-style outfit. And of course there were the scenes where he was in his pajamas.
So during the course of giving out all of his presents to people around the world, he shed the military-style jacket and was just wearing a white shirt with brown patches on the shoulders and a wide colorful belt.

The old man telling the story has shed his outer cloak as well, and he is wearing a white shirt with brown patches on the shoulders and a wide colorful belt.
While the king sings his final song about the joy that he has found in giving, the old man starts to sing along as well.

During which point I thought to myself "Oh that was cool!"
Sure enough, the old man turns to the little girl and says "And so I have returned to my kingdom after my long journey around the world. I have given everything away, and have returned to see the quiltmaker."

"I'm closer than you think" she replies, coming down the stairs with a bundle of white fabric, which she unfolds, revealing a beautifully patterned quilt. The old man can barely contain his joy as he wraps himself in the quilt.
Then he tells the quilt maker that there was one of his possessions that he never gave away, because he wanted to give it to her: His golden throne, so that she has somewhere nice to sit while she makes her quilts.

So all in all, a wonderfully funny but sweet story about giving.