Brundibar

Photo: Liz Lauren, courtesy of Chicago Opera Theater

Photo: Liz Lauren, courtesy of Chicago Opera Theater

“Light fare” is not what you’d expect if you put Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner in a room with Where the Wild Things Are author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, and asked them to make a musical. So it’s no wonder that their collaboration, Brundibar, is on the deep-dish side of kids’ theater.

Photo: Liz Lauren, courtesy of Chicago Opera Theater

“Light fare” is not what you’d expect if you put Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner in a room with Where the Wild Things Are author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, and asked them to make a musical. So it’s no wonder that their collaboration, Brundibar, is on the deep-dish side of kids’ theater.

The title character of this short children’s opera is a sinister, bullying organ-grinder. His antagonists are a brother and sister who, in an attempt to earn money to buy milk for their sick mother, team up in a singing act with some talking animals. The story hews closely to the piece’s original version, which was written in 1938 by Czech composer Hans Krasa and librettist Adolf Hoffmeister in response to the rise of Nazism. (Some kids may have been introduced to Sendak and Kushner’s take on this tale in the pair’s 2003 book of the same name.) Given Kushner’s propensity for social-justice lessons, the piece should have some educational value. Sendak’s storybook-like sets and costumes, meanwhile, will ensure an eye-popping spectacle.

This production, directed by Tony Taccone (Bridge & Tunnel), stars Tony-nominated Euan Morton (Taboo), supported by a children’s choir. The piece is paired with another ’30s Czech opera, Comedy on the Bridge by Vaclava Klimenta Klicpery and Bohuslav Martinu, about a man and his wife trapped on a bridge between opposing armies. Heavy? Perhaps, but likely unforgettable.—Robert Simonson