19
EZTHE
WASHINGTON
POST
.
FRIDAY,MAY
27, 2022
On Stage
PHOTOS BY MANUEL HARLAN
BY GEOFFREY HIMES
I
n 2018, when the acclaimed British
director Sally Cookson was preparing to
debut her stage adaptation of the popu-
lar young-adult novel “A Monster Calls”
for the Old Vic in Bristol, England, she faced
a daunting challenge: How do you transform
a yew tree into a walking, talking monster,
then back into a tree — all within the
budgetary and time limitations of live thea-
ter?
That metamorphosis was central to the
appeal of Patrick Ness’s 2011 novel about
Conor, a 13-year-old British boy trying to
cope with his mother’s cancer. In Ness’s
story, at 12:07 a.m. most nights, the yew treeon a nearby hill grows arms, legs and a face;
it then marches up to Conor’s window to give
him advice, often unwelcome.
Ness’s evocative prose and Jim Kay’s strik-
ing black-and-white illustrations were
enough to make this transformation fully
persuasive. In the well-received 2016 film
adaptation — starring Lewis MacDougall,
Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver and, as the
voice of the CGI monster, Liam Neeson —
digital effects created a walking tree of woven
branches, lit within by a glowing fire. But how
do you make that work on the stage?
“We were doing a workshop,” Cookson
remembers, “and we had to make a decision
about how to design the tree. I wanted a big,
monstrous tree that could be inhabited by
an actor and could appear and disappear
quickly. We built one tree out of paper, then
another out of wood. They both looked really
beautiful, but they were too hard to disas-
semble quickly. I didn’t want to use a
SEE MONSTER ON 21Stage magic brings this ‘Monster’ to life
Director Sally Cookson adapts
a popular 2011 novel with
teamwork and an open mind
If you go
A MONSTER CALLS
John F. Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts, Eisenhower
Theater, 27 00 F St. NW. 202-467-- kennedy-center.org.
Dates: Through June 12.
Prices: $35-$139.
TOP: Anthony Aje, left, plays
Conor and Keith Gilmore i s the
Monster in “A Monster Calls.”
LEFT: How to create the yew
tree that sometimes transforms
into a talking monster was a
central challenge for the
production. The solution: an
assortment of hanging ropes
that can quickly be arranged
into different forms.