For all of his ball-balancing talents and appropriate stares of awe and wonder, he comes off like Harpo Marx. It’s odd, for instance, that the prince, no more than a slip of a child in the book, is portrayed by a muscular man-child (Lionel Zalachas) with golden locks. Whether you’re an adult or a child (and during my Saturday matinee preview, the Broadway Theatre was kid-packed), much of this amorphous action is messy, confusing and slow in the first act. That means aerialists coursing through mid-air, movement artists gliding along the stage and multinational dancers undulating as one.Īll this goes on while telling the autobiographical, allegorical tale about a man who fell to earth (Saint-Exupéry was stranded in the Sahara after his plane crashed), a precocious boy who dreamt of flight and looked towards all things good (Saint-Exupéry as a child, though some postulate the character could be Christ), and a teasing muse, Rose (believed to be inspired by Saint-Exupéry’s wife). That means that the interplanetary travels of “The Little Prince” unspool via video projections that are chic without being overly sleek, and allow characters such as The Lamplighter (Marcin Janiak) to climb into the night’s endless skies or across desert shores with grace. (Chris Mouron, as the Narrator of “Prince,” even has an Anderson-like, sing-song cadence to her voice.)
That means a soundtrack of highly-layered acousto-electric music inspired by Astor Piazzolla’s torridly askew tango and Laurie Anderson’s icy experimental fuzak.
Tournié’s “Little Prince” is given the same French-forward international flair that she’s given “event” productions such as “ Franco Dragone: Le Rêve” in Las Vegas and “The House of Dancing Water” in Macau.