Susan Nanus adapted this popular children’s book by Norton Juster for the stage, transporting us all into a land filled with unusual characters, numerous numbers, and a dictionary of puns, homonyms, and heteronyms that combine to give Milo more appreciation for words and math as well as the preciousness of time.

The Theatre School @ North Coast Repertory Theatre’s one-week-only production was an entertaining adventure – especially for anyone who enjoys good wordplay. It opens with excellent voiceover work by Elyse Cowles as a wise and witty clock who introduces us to lazy Milo (Skyler Sandoval), a young boy who doesn’t just waste time – he kills it. Never happy with what he’s doing, he barely takes the effort to open up a strange and unusual box that has inexplicably appeared in his bedroom.

Opening the contents takes him on a journey to the land where time, words, and numbers become more than just abstract concepts, beginning with a meeting with a “Whether Man” (Allison Finn) who asserts that it’s better to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be. He soon finds himself driving into the Land of the Doldrums where he almost stays forever but for a clever and loyal “watch dog” named Tock (Alene Lynch) who proves that time can be man’s best friend, and Tock watches Milo’s use of time to make sure it’s not wasted.

Together they go to Dictionopolis where their real adventure begins. It seems a war of words and numbers has erupted between King Azaz the Unabridged (Joe Powers, who also directs the show) and the amusing Mathemagician (Theatre School teacher Antonio “T.J.” Johnson). One claims words are most important, the other numbers, and when the sisters Rhyme and Reason claimed that both were equally important, the two women were banished and imprisoned in a tower in the Land of Ignorance. With their absence, both words and numbers are in a state of disarray, so Milo, Tock, and a humorous Humbug (John Griswold) set off on a perilous mission to rescue the sisters – an attempt that makes them face the Terrible Trivium (Eilee Bissell) who tries to make them do useless things with their lives, a very dangerous run-in with the Senses Taker (Carina Kolodny) who attempts to steal their sense of duty and purpose, and an attack by the Demon of Insincerity (Austin Evans).

The cast does a terrific job throughout, from the leads of Skyler Sandoval, Alene Lynch, and John Griswold to several great character actors including Julia D’Ambrosi with her amusingly musical voice of Rhyme, Shauna Peterson as the logical Reason, Allison Finn as the 12-faced Dodecahedron who has to keep turning her head in different directions to reveal her various facial expressions, Natty Zwail as the noisy, mad scientist-type Kakafonous A. Dischord, and his assistant Awful Dynne (grandson of Dreadful Row) played by the versatile Carina Kolodny who turns in three sensational performances including the hilarious, noise-obsessed Awful Dynne whose love of noise is so clear by her voice and body language, later appearing as the truly evil bureaucrat Senses Taker who takes such delight in his job of robbing people of their spirit, and the hilarious Spelling Bee who is equally enthusiastic about her job (spelling words, of course).

Performed May 19 - 22, 2005.

Rob Hopper
San Diego Playbill