First Stage's Dreamy 'Caterpillar' Dance

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First Stage brings the work of popular children’s author Eric Carle to life with Jonathan Rockefeller’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show. A mixed cast of adults and children stage four of Carle’s books with the aid of over 75 puppets and some fairly magical lighting by Craig Zemsky. The stories dreamily drift across the stage in just under one hour—a safe duration for the attention spans of even the youngest theatergoers. The puppets have such a startlingly accurate resemblance to Carle’s illustrations that it feels as though puppets might have been pulled directly from the pages.

Much of the appeal of Carle’s work lies in the simplicity of its steady, uncluttered rhythm. While this is perfectly good for a preschool children’s book, it could easily come across as repetitious when playing-out onstage. But the dreamy dance of the production and its faithfulness to the visual reality of Carle’s art keep the show captivating from beginning to end. The show opens as a student actor plays Carle’s The Artist Who Painted A Blue Horse. An artist paints animals of unexpected colors, all of which leap out from various corners in puppet form as a blank white stage fills with completed paintings. What follows are stagings of The Very Lonely Firefly and Mister Seahorse before closing with The Very Hungry Caterpillar in which a delightfully charming Karen Estrada shepherds the iconic creature through a series of progressively bigger meals which lead to the show’s climactic metamorphosis.

Through Nov. 4 at Milwaukee Youth Arts Center, 325 W. Walnut St. For tickets, visit FirstStage.org or call 414-267-2961.