We are such stuff as dreams are made on. So, we better pick the right dreams — and fight like hell for them.
That’s pretty much the message underlying Sean Kelly’s “Psychonaut Librarians,” now in a world premiere with The New Colony. But given the malaise apparent in many sectors of the nation these days, it’s not a bad place to start an adventure/fantasy tale. And if you’re looking for some goony escapism — well, director Krissy Vanderwarker’s lo-fi, high-octane staging offers plenty of that as well.
The tropes are familiar, to be sure. The title group of book nerds resembles every band of misfit underdogs that has had to use their wits and find unexpected courage in battling evil and saving each other’s lives.
Here, the “evil” comes in the form of the Sandman (Jack McCabe), who stirs up fear in the mind of young Jane (Christine Mayland Perkins), daughter of eccentric librarian Hester (David Cerda). Hester has developed a potion that takes her to the “Anyverse,” which is, well, an alternative universe where seemingly anything can happen.
When she takes Jane there, the girl falls in love with a renegade minion of the Sandman, Dewey (Matt Farabee). But they are separated, and Jane retreats from her noncustodial mother and into a world where she buys the illusion of security at the price of imagination and risk.
Skip ahead 20 years, and Jane reunites with Hester on the day of the latter’s retirement party. Hester’s fellow librarians Emmerick (Michael Peters) and Rosemary (Morgan McNaught) have found Hester’s stash of Anyverse juice and spiked the punch bowl. Before you can say “Drink Me,” all of them — including clueless security guard PJ (the note-perfect Carlos Olmedo) — are through the looking glass. Or the wardrobe. (Is this a phantom tollbooth I see before me?)
So yes — the broad outlines of Kelly’s story feel derivative of classic fantasy allegories from time to time. There’s a bit of navel-gazing naifishness about embracing story for story’s own sake. (We surely understand after this year that mythmaking has its downside, yes?) The Dewey/Jane connection seems like a cartoon gloss on Carl Jung’s animus/anima notions of the unconscious.
But once the whole gang is assembled in the Anyverse, where they must help Dewey escape the Sandman and find his way back to Jane, “Psychonaut Librarians” delivers with ingratiating wit and energy. The low-budget design elements provide all the homemade charm of, say, the House Theatre of Chicago but on a more intimate scale — from finger-puppet versions of the characters taking a literal “leap of faith” to their bargain-basement super-hero duds, which feature tiny red tables like those in a children’s library atop their heads. (Breanne Ward and Evan Troost crafted the puppets, including the ones representing the Sandman’s non-Dewey minions, and Catherine Tantillo designed the costumes.) There’s even a cameo appearance by a fighting bear, for pete’s sake. How much more ingratiating can a show get than that?
Cerda, the founder of camp/parody mainstay Hell in a Handbag, wraps Hester in a cloak of acerbic knowingness (“How is Daddy? Suffocatingly small-minded?” she asks Jane early on) punctured by a touching sense of maternal loss. Peters’ Emmerick and McNaught’s Rosemary bring out the dynamic between the former’s stiff-necked propriety and the latter’s emerging free-spiritedness with playful appeal.
The Jane/Dewey relationship doesn’t feel quite as vital as it should as a driver of the story. I found myself wanting to see more between Jane and her mother, despite Farabee’s beguilingly innocent take on Dewey. But Kelly ends his fairy tale on a note that suggests redemption and unity will trump darkness.
Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.
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Review: “Psychonaut Librarians” by New Colony (3 stars)
When: Through Feb. 12
Where: The Den Theatre, 1333 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Running time: 90 minutes
Tickets: $20 at thenewcolony.org