Two very different Little Princes

It’s highly unusual to have the chance to see how two different theatre companies interpret the same story.

It’s a real treat too, and two current productions of The Little Prince are so incredibly different that you’re practically watching two different plays.

In one, four different actors play the Prince in a show filled with gleeful exuberance. In the other, the Prince is represented by a puppet, and the mood is far more thoughtful and sombre.

First, the commonalities. The Little Prince was written for kids 75 years ago by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and begins with a pilot who has crashed into the Sahara, as Saint-Exupery himself once did. The pilot meets a young boy from another planet, who has already visited a handful of other planets and met some decidedly odd characters. His encounters with materialistic, narcissistic, avaricious and drunken adults show the Prince – and his readers – how adults have lost the precious magic of innocence and imagination and the wonder of life itself.

Up at Montecasino, VR Theatricals has turned the story into a thoughtful musical with songs by Wessel Odendaal. Director Elizma Badenhorst has written a script tightly based on the original book and gone heavy on the puppetry, with a stark, pointy-faced shadow puppet doing much of the narration. The very real Caitlin Salgado plays the pilot while two puppeteers manipulate the Prince.

Down at the Market Theatre, the Kwasha! Theatre Company, which was formed to create work for drama graduates, has thrown subtlety away and jumped in with an exuberant, rambunctious version filled with African singing, dancing, a touch of vernac and an infectious joie de vivre.

Mathews Rantsoma as the pilot makes a charming and captivating narrator. Around him Sinenhlanhla Mgeyi, Balindile ka Ngcobo, Khanyisile Ngwabe and Lesego April Chabedi play all the other characters including the Prince, who becomes a composite of everyone.

Directors Mwenya Kabwe and Clara Vaughan have made it eminently watchable, but many of the contemplative messages in the original story have been glossed over or removed. Now it’s a fancy fairytale, not a thoughtful reflection on life and the meaning of.

The flatter nature of the VR Theatricals version - literally flat with its shadow puppets and projections - left some of the young audience restless. Those who gave it their attention were rewarded with more to ponder about the nature of adults and the risks and responsibilities of loving or befriending. Here we have the fox explaining that ‘taming’ someone brings with it a responsibility to care for them, and there’s much more emphasis on the way that important things are seen with the heart, not the eyes.

But the slow pace of the show and the use of so much puppetry dimmed the opportunity to connect with the audience, and demanded their determined attention rather than enchanting and pulling them in.

So which do you go for? The bold and brash Kwasha! Production, or the more contemplative, message-heavier VR Theatricals offering?

A mash-up of the two would be ideal – joyful enough to hold your attention and make you laugh and thoughtful enough to retain the story’s original meaning.

Both The Little Prince shows run until November 25. Tickets for the Kwasha! Show at the Market Theatre Laboratory (across the road from the Market Theatre) from Webtickets and for VR Theatricals at Montecasino’s Studio Theatre from Computicket.