Storybook Theatre: The Three Musketeers

RE: The Three Musketeers

Performed by Storybook Theatre as part of their Adventures in Theatre series 

For kids aged 6-12 to 100

Do you remember going to the theatre as a kid? I remember when my mom would take me to the Young People's Theatre in Toronto and it was an adventure. I remember none of the actual plays that I saw, but I DO remember that it was so much fun. It was truly interactive theatre. It was transporting  and transforming, and it was theatre celebrating the sheer joy of life.

Storybook Theatre in Calgary is like that. Their production of the Three Musketeers this past weekend at the Pumphouse Theatre downtown was a fantastic show. The lead male actors that played the rascally Musketeers (Porthos, Aramis and Athos) and especially the actor who played the lead d'Artagnan character (John Knight, pictured above), were natural and incredibly fun to watch. Their swordfighting skills, their group dynamics and evident mischievousness, and even the fit of their costumes contributed to theatre so believable that I was transported back to 1600s Paris and the feeling of looking into a secret world of the Kings guards. This is an amazing achievement considering that I was in a room full of cheering (and booing) kids that smelled a little like a stinky diaper. But no one cared about the smell (kind of like Paris back then). The performance of the actors was certainly beyond the scope of that stage and this little theatre-company-that-could. It was a big treat, indeed. It not only transported me to Paris it transported me into a younger version of myself for a few hours. And what a wonderful gift to the next generation of kids that will make up this community! No doubt, those kids carried the swordfights and bravery into their tufty beds and into their dreams that night. They were opened up to a world of possibility, of bravery, of honour and manhood. Now I will have to read the Dumas classics for myself and see if they hold up to this kids adaptation.