Through the Mickle Woods

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'Through the Mickle Woods'

A good frame story, or a story-within-a-story, feels like bonus content: two for one. In the case of Through the Mickle Woods (based on the book of the same name), the viewer actually gets four stories for one — all of them sweet and imbued with childlike narrative qualities, but mostly centered around adult themes on the complications of a life fully lived. What happens, for instance, when you’ve loved deeply and that person dies, leaving you feeling lost in the woods of life? This is the question facing the king (Ashley Morton) as he grudgingly starts his journey with Michael (Will Bunch), a small boy who brought to his attention a letter from his late wife, asking him to find a wise old bear. He goes forth with the boy and begins his journey of healing. The fairytale quality of this story was beautifully illustrated for the audience with paper-cut props, bells, homemade trinkets and icicles, and then enhanced with sounds such as children playing in the background and, once in a while, a modern beat that enlivened the mood. Speaking of children, it’s Bunch as Michael who really brings this book to life. His joie de vivre is infectious, his movements fluid and lithe. Michael’s dancing plants a stirring inside the audience, and that’s really the goal: to remind every listener of his own possibilities for joy. Once we finally meet the bear, the king is still unprepared to face his wife’s demise. Three short stories from the bear reveal the king beginning to take the first steps toward healing. It’s actually somewhat amazing that the production could include, in a timely manner, three additional stories, each in the folktale manner of the main story itself, but each movement of the cast is done with intention. The king doesn’t waste a step transforming into more minor characters, and none of the charm is lost. The bear is played by Nicole Hershey, a small young woman mostly confined to a chair. But her movements were highly expressive: Her ability to stretch and impose was very bearlike. It’s the bear I’ve been unable to forget, and its message of living life for the present moment.