Broadway in Orlando review: Touring ‘Water for Elephants’ is almost as enchanting as it was in NYC

A few years ago, I flew up to New York City to see a certain Broadway blockbuster about a boy wizard (which will be apparating in Orlando next January) and decided to take a chance on a discount matinee ticket for yet another book-turned-movie-turned-play. But while I walked into the musical adaptation of Water for Elephants with sawdust-sized expectations, it proved to be a far more magical experience than the mega-budget muggle marathon I’d endure later that evening. Indeed, I exited that original production feeling like I was soaring on a flying trapeze, and the only thing that brought me back to earth was skepticism that any touring company — particularly a non-Equity one like the NETWorks presentation presently at the Dr. Phillips Center — could hope to approach its heights.

Fortunately, I needn’t have fretted, because this touring production faithfully provides a good 95 percent of what made it so enchanting on Broadway. Rick Elice’s beautifully written book, which adapts Sara Gruen’s novel with impressive efficiency and emotional depth, frames the Depression-era fable as a memory play, narrated by the elderly Mr. Jankowski (Robert Tully, even more authentic than his Broadway counterpart). He recounts his younger days as Jacob (Zachary Keller, charmingly cornfed), the reluctant veterinarian for a ragtag traveling circus ruled by August (Connor Sullivan, cruelly charismatic) and populated by kind-hearted outcasts. 

An unconventional love quadrangle develops between Jacob; the sadistic ringmaster’s winsome wife, June (Helen Krushinski, a petite powerhouse); and Rosie, the titular pachyderm, as incarnated by a giant puppet with gorgeous eyelashes. She’s only the most massive member of puppet designers Camille LaBarre, Ray Wetmore & JR Goodman’s enchanting menagerie, which also includes Broadway’s most affecting abstracted equine since War Horse. All creatures great and small figure in the climactic tragedy that Jacob’s tale inevitably builds to, but fear not, animal lovers, because [spoiler alert] the elephant gets a happy ending. 

All the major elements of the Broadway production have been retained for the tour, including Takeshi Kata’s sets, David I. Reynoso’s costumes and Bradley King’s lighting, all of which successfully evoke Dust Bowl barrenness and big-top ballyhoo. Most importantly, the show’s chorus of “kinkers & rousts” is up to the challenge of not only dancing Jesse Robb & Shana Carroll’s athletic choreography while singing homespun harmonies behind PigPen Theatre Co.’s cozy folk-inflected songs, but also executing death-defying feats of aerial acrobatics. Unlike the over-praised production of Pippin that circus designer Carroll’s company The 7 Fingers previously worked on, the spellbinding cirque stunts in Water for Elephants feel organically integrated and utterly essential.

Those who did see the Broadway cast will notice that tour director Ryan Emmons’ re-creation of Jessica Stone’s original work is missing some pacing subtleties and emotional nuance. The cast, while impressively energetic overall, are mostly on their first national tours, and many struggle with diction and breath control during kinetic production numbers like “The Road Don’t Make You Young” and “Zostan” — an issue exacerbated by opening night’s inconsistent microphone mix, which has become an ongoing and consistent problem for the Broadway in Orlando series. Those relatively minor issues didn’t prevent my cheeks from getting just as moist during Water for Elephant’s elegiac coda as they were when I first watched it on the Great White Way. Jump through whatever hoops you have to to catch this soul-soothing circus before it runs away without you.

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