Where the Wild Things Are

An Immersive Rumpus by Shara Feit

Or: There and Back Again.

It’s tough to squeeze an hour long entertainment from a twelve page book. Especially from such a simple and self contained piece as Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things are. How to distill and not dilute the feeling of wonder and delight? The answer, as chosen by adapter Shara Feit and her directors Cammy Harris and Connor Lifson: Stage a Rumpus.

Over hill and over dale, across Northwestern’s Lake-fill, guided by an eager host of boisterous and buoyant spirits, we sprint, play-tag, leaf-fight, sail, simon-say, roar, gnash, and roll after the adventures of Max (in the three forms of Juliet Roll, Jeremy Gubman, Elise Ammondson) who leaves his home to become king of all Wild things. Harris and Lifson (doubling as Mother and Portable Sound System) have let loose their imaginations, punctuated by poignant pictures, as when Max flies into a terror and destroys (and devours) his room screaming for a perfect, limitless place, both hilarious and heartfelt and just a little bit frightening. It’s a wild, playful romp in the turning of the year, the delight of running outside and playing pretend en mass and being amongst irrepressible personalities.

Yet within all the galumphing, Feit has taken the time and the care to place seedling ground. There’s no message, no wise saws about growing up, or growing up. Only observations about family and loneliness and belonging. When Max decides to leave, one Wild Thing (Becca Ehlers) gives a superb, heartfelt remonstration, resonant in its hurt, confusion and betrayal. “Wild Thing’s never go away! Why do you have to go! We’ll eat you up we love you so!”

But the sweetest drops wrung from the hour out beyond the world we know are the moments when the rush pauses. When Roll’s Max invites us to the water’s edge to take in Truth Telling Time (“Because my Mom says every Wild Rumpus has Quiet Time and quiet time is truth telling times.” And walks us, with that unquestionable authority of the young, about what makes us feel safe and wild all together as we lie together and look up into the stars, smudged by still visible. It kindles a feeling of warmth and contentment and snuggness, deep in the belly, such as I have not felt in a long time. It was a gift, and one worked thorough the romp, a permission to play and be as free as you desired, with the knowledge there would always be a home to come back to, where dinner would still be hot.