Before we share more from the SCT Review Crew, I thought I'd take a moment and explain these "spoiler tags" you're seeing.
"I Was a Rat!" has something of a surprise involved in the story. It isn't a secret if you've read the book, and the more astute members of our audience will probably pick up on the clues and figure it out quite quickly. And, anyway, the surprise isn't really what the story is about.
But, to make sure we preserve the surprise for anyone so inclined, I'm putting spoiler tags on reviews from our Review Crew that might let the secret slip. Just click the spoiler button for the full tale.
All that being said, let's get on to the review from SCT Review Crew-er Nadine S.
SCT's new production, "I Was A Rat!," is a twisted fairy tale.
SPOILERS!
Through a series of mishaps, the boy, named "Roger" (Don Darryl Rivera) by the kind couple, finds himself on display as a "monster," vilified by rumour and fear spread by newpapers that serve not to inform, but to make a buck. It takes a princess to save him, leaving us with the relief and hope that fairytale endings can happen anywhere.
Don Darryl Rivera as Roger the rat-boy. Photo by Chris Bennion.Roger's journey is staged by the SCT like a Dickens novel. The set is dark, gray and urban with lurid newspaper headlines slashed all over the stage. The kind couple are dressed in depression-era clothing and their warm, cobbler's cottage is the only homey place on this stark set. The other characters are dressed in Victorian rags and tags, ruffians straight from Oliver Twist. A fairytale castle looms behind, far in the distance. Some characters in the play, such the evil Fagin-like grifter who attempts to put Roger on display as the monstrous "Rat Boy," and the street urchin who, like the Artful Dodger, has a good heart but steals and connives to survive, make us fear that Roger will come to a tragic end.
The play shows the best and the worst of humanity and, thankfully, all turns right for Roger. The SCT once again lightens the story with humor and the actors made this crazy fairy-tale seem real. Our daughter (7) loved this play and so did we. It gave us the perfect chance to talk with her about how to decide if what you read in the newspaper is always true and how sometimes fear leads people to do the wrong things. The happy ending left us with the feeling that even in such a difficult world, most people are really good at heart.
"I Was a Rat!" runs in SCT's Charlotte Martin Theatre through June 7th.
What happens if one of the rats turned into a footman by Cinderella's godmother doesn't revert back to a rodent at midnight? The main character of "I Was A Rat," is in this fix, and he suddenly finds himself a boy, with no idea how to act like a human and no one to care for him. Bewildered and afraid, the rat/boy knocks on the door of a kind, childless couple and with the explanation, "I was a rat," the story begins. Like the couple, we don't learn until later how the rat became a boy or why (he ran off from his post as Cinderella's footman to take her to the ball and was never reverted to his true self at midnight), so that we, too, are thrown confused into a world in which the rich live in a fairytale castle and the rest of the people live in a depressed, gray, and poor world, populated with unscrupulous grifters and desperate orphans who have to live hard to get by.