How do we change the world?

Review

If you know someone with endless idealism, you’ve probably envied and begrudged them by turns. It might be nice to see good in everything, but idealists can be high-maintenance. Can’t they just come back to earth?

In Ten Thousand Things’s current musical, Dear World, an ultra-idealist shines. Her name is Countess Aurelia, and she’s brightly played by Janet Paone. But when villains threaten her slice of life, her actions beg deeper questions. Based on Jean Giradoux’s play The Madwoman of Chaillot, Dear World is a resonant, sneaky satire guest directed for TTT by new Jungle Theater Artistic Director Sarah Rasmussen.

Ten Thousand Things is a dexterous company, bringing their productions to prisons, libraries, and other places where the community might not have easy access to theater. To help pay the bills, they also stage their shows for the general public, and I caught a performance at Bedlam in Lowertown. The production certainly flipped my expectations—the stage was just a rectangle bordered by the audience’s chairs, and the house lights stayed up the whole time. Peter Vitale juggled frequent cues as music director, and Jerry Herman’s score held up.

Save Paris, Save the World

In Paris, Nina (a well-voiced Sheena Janson) and Alain (Shawn Vriezen, the first actor TTT has worked with who’s Deaf) wait tables at the Countess’s café. When a self-centered prospector (Kris Nelson) thinks he’s found oil under the shop, he hatches disastrous plans; three men, simply known as “Presidents” (Fred Wagner, Thomasina Petrus, and Christina Baldwin), join him in trying to strike it rich. However, their associate Julian (JuCoby Johnson) spurns his evil bosses; the Countess learns of their plot through him, and she spends the rest of the play trying to “save the world” (which apparently just means “save Paris”).

Marching around the small stage, Dear World’s villains showed little menace—they recalled “Easy Street” (the song from Annie), not Wall Street, with their gleeful dance numbers and cartoonishly evil grins. But the play cut deep when it wanted to. While baiting the Presidents through a letter, the Countess dictated, “I’m a feeble woman, and I’m in need of your guidance!” Some distinctly female laughter rang out from the audience, and the Countess gave an aside: “That gets ‘em every time.”

Since certain points were so precise, the muddy ones seemed intentionally so. As the Countess breezed through her problems, I felt obliged to question her methods. For example: when she needed some guidance, she simply summoned the Sewer Man, a smiling soul who popped up after a few raps on a table. How could that be so easy?

A Song of Denial

After she learned of the presidents’ plot, the Countess sang of denial: “If people are no longer loving, then I don’t want to know.” Her denial seemed to become resolve: “By dusk tonight, I will have saved the world.”

But whose world did she set out to save? Though the Countess said she’d “woken up” from her madness, everyone seemed like they’d been sucked into her world—not the other way around. Late in the show, a song sketched the Countess’s friends’ whimsies; Aurelia spoke to the universe, Constance (Christina Baldwin) beckoned “the voices,” and Gabrielle (Thomasina Petrus) summoned her invisible dog.

Whimsy is the only way to explain Nina and Julian’s lightweight romance, which sparked practically from love at first sight. The whole subplot felt like a waste of time.

Back to the Countess: her world’s flaws started to show when she rallied her troops in the last pre-intermission number, yelling, “Everyone knows what to do!” Cue my whiplash—she hadn’t discussed any plan (perhaps the characters had just strategized outside of the audience’s space, but that didn’t seem right). But the Countess’s friends affirmed her cry, cheering. Both audience and ensemble barreled toward Act Two, and no one ever woke up. The Countess closed with, “Dear world, we’ll be fine. Just fine! And you see how simple it was?”

Interpretation of Dear World can be open-ended—actually, the couple next to me thought it centered around sacrifice—but in our present context, I took it as a warning. Anyone can seek to save the world, but the right methods are unclear and surely complicated. Cutting off hydra heads (Presidents; millionaires) won’t help; neither will living in ignorance.

For me, Dear World posed a challenge: If you’re trying to mend the world, go about it shrewdly. Know the systems you’re working against. Prepare, and strike with wisdom.

Considering the nature of Ten Thousand Things' work, they seem to follow that advice.

Headshot of Cecilia Johnson
Cecilia Johnson

Cecilia Johnson graduated from Hamline University with a love for A&E. Find her by blasting Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia,” because she will show up and turn it off—though a simple Twitter follow might be easier for both of you.