Playground Theatre: Inanna and the Huluppu Tree (1 review)

It's not very often that I find reviews of plays for children, so I'm delighted that The Playground Theatre's production of Inanna and the Huluppu Tree is getting some well-deserved attention.

One of the world's oldest stories comes to life for contemporary audiences. Celebrate the victory of a young goddess who restores harmony to a city ravaged by ceaseless storms and displaced deities.

Stephanie Ansin directed a cast that includes Caroline Sa, Armando Acevedo, Noah Levin, Melissa Almaguer, Jeff Keogh, Kristin Dawn McCorkle, Jesus Quineter, and Joshua Ritter.

Brandon K. Thorp reviewed for the Miami New Times:

...what every place should have — is an institution like Miami Shores' Playground Theatre. Currently running there is Inanna and the Huluppu Tree, a kids-appropriate bit of pagan revelry dredged up from the dawn of civilization — from the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic, specifically — and liberally adapted by Fernando Calzadilla and the theater's artistic director, Stephanie Ansin.

Adults who accompany children to Inanna might have a hard time getting turned on by this plot, which is not only utterly G-rated but also devoid of the grownup-friendly double- and triple-entendres that have come to characterize kids' entertainment on film. But they can't help but get turned on by the Playground Theatre's eye-popping visuals — the crew's ability to import an atmosphere of mysticism and remote antiquity into a theater space that, pre-show, you'd think was too big and modern to seem like anything other than a big, modern theater.

With Inanna, the Playground Theatre transports adults to a place where magic is a given. It cannot do the same for children, because the world of magic is one they already inhabit. What the Playground Theatre does for them, whether they know it or not, is make a promise: that one day, even after the long jading of growing up has taught them that the gods do not fly, that a city, no matter how divine, cannot be sustained by fruit, there is always a place beyond the footlights where those things can be true for a while.

Inanna and the Huluppu Tree plays at The Playground Theatre through December 20, 2009.