'James and the Giant Peach' gets musical adaptation at Woodstock Arts Theater

July 12th, 2022

"James and the Giant Peach" is on stage at Woodstock Arts Theatre July 13-27. (Courtesy of Elm Street Arts)

Just as Georgia peaches are at their most delicious, a giant peach is center stage at Woodstock Arts Theater. A musical adaptation of “James and the Giant Peach,” based on the story by Roald Dahl, opens July 13 for a two-week run, with a sensory-friendly performance on July 16. Woodstock Arts artistic director Zach Stolz joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom along with Sabrina Lloyd, director of “James and the Giant Peach,” to talk about the classic tale of finding family in friendship and its hit musical adaptation.

Adapting a poignant story of an abused child:

“I think we have to start by just admitting that Dahl himself was probably a victim of abuse because I don’t know how somebody could understand it so intimately from the outside as an artist,” said Lloyd. “I don’t think that he probably had adequate help and that his art was probably his help … It’s one of his earlier works, so it’s a little more raw. It’s a little more unfiltered and un-commented-on. He’s processing as opposed to having processed stuff, and I think in trauma therapy, they try to avoid things like ‘forgive your abuser.’ You know, you don’t owe your abuser anything else. You can actually move forward, and I think that’s a very sophisticated and modern take on coming through trauma, and it’s right at the center of what this story is about.”

“There’s a really interesting moment where — spoiler alerts, I suppose — James’ evil aunts, they exit the story, and they exit it permanently,” said Stolz. “James turns to the bugs and says, ‘Should I be sad about that?’ And they give him permission to not be, to walk away from his trauma and his abuse, and to step forward from it. And every time I hear it in rehearsal, it just takes my breath away … I think for the creators of the musical to really put the emphasis on that healing nature of ‘found family’ and stepping past your trauma is just such a lovely, poignant thing.”

Addressing the esteemed author’s less lovable aspects and beliefs:

“These musicals, both ‘James and the Giant Peach’ and ‘Matilda,’ are taking these core levels of really fantastic children’s work, and they become an adaptation. So they move past the hidden darknesses of the racism, the antisemitism and the darker tones that don’t belong in the story for us while still holding onto, as Sabrina and I had talked about a lot when she first came aboard to start working on it, it is a story about trauma,” said Stolz. “It never talks down to young audiences. As a musical, as a piece, it is very inviting, and it is very clear about these heavier topics it wants to talk about, but it has been scrubbed from some of the truly distasteful history of Roald Dahl itself.”

A feast for the eyes with puppetry and otherworldly set design:

“This show is very big. There are lists and lists and lists of characters that pop in and out for one second, and then we never see them again, and many of those are now puppets. So we have a lot of rod puppets that are just, you know, stick puppets. We have some hand puppets; we have light puppets; we have shadow puppets. We have some spiders that are glove puppets. So we have a pretty broad range of ways that we’re using our puppets, and they all relate back to James as an imaginative, perhaps future writer, a reader right now. So most of the puppets, we try to make them organically look like they come out of a storybook imagination,” said Lloyd.

She added, “[The crew] are having a lot of fun. Our peach is slowly becoming this massive centerpiece, and I think they’ll be painting it in a few days. So I’m very excited to see the final result.”

“James and the Giant Peach” is on stage at Woodstock Arts Theatre July 13-27. Tickets and more information are available at woodstockarts.org/events/james-and-the-giant-peach.