I only remember jagged details from the books I read as a kid. They radiate in my mind, with a dangerous half-life: characters literally jumping to conclusions in The Phantom Tollbooth, or mysteriously traveling halfway to a destination in Half Magic. One of my favorite details comes from Madeleine L’Engle’s classic 1962 novel A Wrinkle in Time. A subplot concerned a character who drew a literal short straw and was exiled into space travel by chance—a horror movie premise inside a fantastical story.
You won’t find this storyline in the new musical adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, making its world premiere in Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage and running through July 20. Its omission is a deliberate choice by librettist Lauren Yee and composer-lyricist-arranger Heather Christian. L’Engle’s novel is a blur of theology, science, and philosophy—so cuts are necessary when translating from page to stage. But Yee and Christian elide the cosmic horror of L’Engle’s novel in favor of delightful and confounding spectacles. If I’d experienced the musical version of the story as a kid, I’d remember a sense of awe, not disturbance.
From the outset, this A Wrinkle in Time acknowledges it’s throwing a lot at its audience. “I am too much. I am a mess” admits Meg Murry (Taylor Iman Jones), an anxious middle schooler who’s always comparing herself to others. She feels over-emotional next to her nerdy brother Charles Wallace (Mateo Lizcano) and seemingly serene mother (Andrea Jones-Sojola). Meg’s scientist father (Jon Walker, seen in flashbacks) disappeared years ago without any explanation. Meg has become sullen, and bullying from classmates follows—except for the athletic Calvin (a sweet Nicholas Barrón).
Eccentric women soon appear, imploring Meg to rethink what she knows. Mrs Whatsit (the always charming Amber Gray) interrupts the family on a stormy night, speaking of paradoxes and tesseracts. Mrs Who (Stacey Sargeant) arrives as an artist-quoting teacher, asking students to celebrate uncertainty. With the entrance of Mrs Which (Vicki Lewis), a witchy trio has gathered to guide Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin across the stars. Their goal is to find Meg’s father but to also fight a sinister force that’s ensnared minds on Earth and across the galaxy.
Besides extending “intellectual property,” why turn A Wrinkle in Time into a musical? For Christian, this project was likely an enticing challenge. In her novel, L’Engle writes just enough words for readers to imagine the sublime but not pin it down. When one alien character sings in the novel, L’Engle writes of Meg’s reaction: “...she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real.”
How do you compose a song like that? Christian’s music frequently rises to L’Engle’s dare: this musical sounds glorious. There are ascending piano flourishes, lush orchestral strings, and inventive percussion that can feel both threatening and anthemic. Still, I think I’d appreciate the score better in a concert setting rather than a musical theater one. In the most transporting moments of the show, Christian’s music protracts almost into a fugue. But musical audiences are trained to expect that no matter how discordant music becomes, melodies will resolve into major chords and humorous scenes will arrive. This musical follows suit.
Christian’s soaring music is also weighed down by her lyrics, which favor theories over emotion. Sometimes, this approach works. In Charles Wallace’s first number he sings, “What is a father. / Is that like a mother with more keys? / Is that like a sister with more answers?” For a child like Charles Wallace, asking the question “Why has my dad abandoned me?” is too blunt. So he turns to metaphor instead, approaching his sadness sideways. It’s smart writing for a smart character.
This same lyrical style is used when the Mrs trio explain who they are:
Love doesn’t need to speak to be
Lives as much inside your heart as in your house or in your knees
At the same time, in the same places, simultaneously being—
That’s like us! That’s how we do.
Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Which and Mrs Who
These words shine on the page, when you’re able to carefully consider the argument. But in performance, multiple lines like these are stated every minute. With song after song of these koans, my brain eventually tuned out the lyrics and just appreciated the melodies.
Most songs in A Wrinkle in Time are like this: it’s one group of characters making a point, demanding attention for a few minutes. Director Lee Sunday Evans is wildly inventive when staging space travel, and she utilizes a 10-person ensemble for dazzling stage pictures. But Evans can’t quite fit her protagonists into the songs. For most of the first act, the young characters simply watch in wonder as they’re moved from planet to planet.
This is partially the nature of the story. Meg is like Alice in Wonderland or Dorothy in Oz, an ordinary girl grounding an audience in an upside-down world. The problem is that Meg hardly sings for most of the show’s runtime (her inability to sing in tempo is even played for laughs), so Jones is stranded in a leading role with few chances to lead.
Since Gray’s Mrs. Whatsit steals most of her scenes in this production, it’s hard not to compare A Wrinkle in Time to Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, another dense, mythological show that starred Gray. Mitchell and Christian share a love of poetry, but poetry is not drama. Mitchell reworked her musical for years to better dramatize character arcs, and Christian should do the same with future Wrinkle productions. The best contemporary musical theater songs are scenes of epiphany, heartbreak, confrontation, and confession. In A Wrinkle in Time, characters present theories on language and work and love. But it’s all just theory.
If Christian’s lyrics feel too tied to L’Engle’s prose, Yee’s book breaks free with bold adaptation choices. Yee’s previous D.C. productions followed father-daughter relationships, but this show prioritizes its siblings. Novel purists may protest, but the climax now feels well-earned.
Yee also isn’t afraid to bring the novel’s political critiques into the present day. The planet Camazotz, written in the novel as a conformist post-WWII suburbia, is now staged with corporate optimization, toxic positivity, and dawning class consciousness. It’s a WeWork from hell, which is to say, a WeWork. Christian’s lyrics pierce the audience when the ensemble sings, “The world is not oppressing you / you are oppressing yourself.” Here, Camazotz is forever sunny, and characters find refuge in shadows (Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s beautiful lighting design withholds as much as it illuminates). Yee’s subverting religious imagery; it’s playing in the dark in ways Toni Morrison would’ve actually loved.
Other adaptation choices feel more familiar. The Arena Stage production nearly replicates the racial makeup of director Ava DuVernay’s 2018 film adaptation, with a Black Meg with a Black mother and white father. Watching A Wrinkle in Time onstage, I see a multiracial group of Americans fighting against a world where differences are seen but ignored. Yet the cast is stuck in a musical where racial differences are seen by audiences but ignored by the script. My mind spirals with questions. Is Meg’s father only white in these adaptations because directors don’t want to stage an absent Black father? Is Meg biracial, and what does it mean if she is? Would Camazotz be more scary for Meg if it was an all-white planet?
Maybe this theatrical world isn’t oppressing me, and I’m oppressing myself with analysis. Or maybe this allegorical story deserves a more coherent grounding in the multiracial America where it’s set and performed.
The novel A Wrinkle in Time stayed with me into adulthood because it plunged me into a disturbing void. Ultimately Yee, Christian, and Evans never allow their audience to get lost in that void: we’re instead lost in a mess of bodies and theory. Perhaps audiences arrive in a theater already bound by presence and harmony and a hopeful community rhythm. If we want to reckon with the horrific details of life—or just experience a profound void-like silence—we’ll have to do so on our own time.
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A Wrinkle in Time is currently running at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. through July 20.
