The Little Prince
Photograph courtesy Prudence Upton
Published April 17, 2022
On any other night, I would have ignored audience chatter during a play. I am easily enraged by people who disrespect the audience and the performers – and at one show, I asked the ushers to escort a woman out of the theater. (We did not need her to inform us that Denzel Washington was shirtless onstage during A Raisin in the Sun. I could see that just fine on my own, thank you.) This changed on Thursday night when an audience member at The Little Prince asked loudly, “Why are they clapping?” I listened carefully, hoping someone would provide an answer.
No one did. Everyone else at the Broadway Theatre was as bewildered as I was by this adaptation of Antoine de St. Exupéry classic children’s book. Co-directed by Anne Tournié and Chris Mouron, The Little Prince is a bloated and baffling production, a blend of music, dance, cirque acts and narration that manages to be both boring and overstimulating. By attempting to achieve too much, the production fails to achieve anything.
Narrated (in heavily amplified both audio and a breathy French accent) by librettist and co-director Chris Mouron), The Little Prince follows the title character (played by Lionel Zalachas) as he recalls his adventures traveling through the universe to an aviator (Aurélien Bednarek), who meets the prince after crash landing his plane in a desert.
Each story is performed in a series of vignettes that include a businessman (Adrien Picaut), a fox (Dylan Barone), a snake (Srilata Ray) and a rose (Laurisse Sulty). Each character’s dialogue is delivered in the same breathy monotone by Mouroun, accompanied by Anne Tournié’s dully repetitive and ponderously lengthy choreography and set to Terry Truck’s monotonous pre-recorded score. The prince passively sits and watches almost every scene – a job I don’t envy.
The scenes quickly begin to blur, lacking any cohesive narration and failing to inspire any emotion other than frustration. The sets and costumes do the show no favors – Peggy Housset’s costumes are unimpressive and ill-fitting; the Fox’s costume appears to have been scavenged from a discarded scrap pile at a touring production of CATS – and Marie Jumelin’s projections can only be described as distracting at best.
Photograph courtesy Joan Marcus
Any chidlren’s book is interwoven with themes that speak to adults as well, and The Little Prince is no exception. St. Exupéry’s book explores the emotions of friendship, loss, loneliness and love, as well as the ephemeral nature of the innocence of childhood and the bittersweet effects of age and maturity. None of this is represented onstage.
What the show lacks in emotion it fails to achieve in narrative coherence. During the entirely unnecessary intermission, this critic had to consult Wikipedia in an attempt to grasp what had just happened onstage.
The purity of story’s themes is lost in the muddle of colors and noise, as the narration repeatedly emphasizes the importance of imagination while simultaneously stifling the opportunity for it. It was impossible to muse on the melancholy feeling that should have been inspired by the narrator’s declaration, “No grown up could ever understand how such a feeling could be so important,” when the only thing this critic felt was a headache.
The meaning of “One sees clearly with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye,” was lost, but the statement, “No one is satisfied where he is. No one is ever satisfied,” did ring true. While sitting in the audience of The Little Prince, I certainly was not satisfied.