Who are you when you lose everything?
That is what director Jessica Stone has said is at the center of the stage musical version of “Water for Elephants.” Sounds like a major downer, doesn’t it?
Well, it isn’t.
The Broadway national tour, now playing the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale through Nov. 23, somehow manages to smile brightly and crack acerbic jokes, all the while enveloping its sorrow in a close hug.
Based on a 2006 book by Sara Gruen that became a 2011 movie (starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz and Hal Holbrook), the show bowed on the Great White Way last year and was nominated for seven Tony Awards.
Set in the Depression era, the story is told in flashback. Jacob Jankowski (played by Zachary Keller as a young man and Robert Tully as the elder version) is running away from the grief of losing his parents in a car accident. Penniless and without hope of finishing his veterinarian studies, he hops on a train only to find out it is carrying a down-on-its-luck traveling circus.
That is where “Water for Elephants” sticks its landing.
Matt Murphy for MurphyMade
Zachary Keller and the cast of “Water for Elephants.” (Matt Murphy for MurphyMade/Courtesy)
The production is visually triumphant, choreography brightened by airborne acrobatics, balancing acts and terpsichorean tricks. The score, though admittedly not particularly memorable, does have a some toe-tappers, with music flowing something akin to a concept album. Imagine Cirque du Soleil … set to folk music.
And the transitions are filmic, seamless, keeping the show moving for two hours plus a 20-minute intermission.
That is needed as the narrative follows Jankowski’s run-ins with the volatile circus owner/ringmaster August (Connor Sullivan) and — giving the story another layer of impending “ohhh-nooooo” — his blossoming romance with August’s wife and circus star performer, Marlena (Helen Krushinski).
So where does that title come from? Yes, there is an elephant, beautifully and ingeniously realized through puppetry and … um … muppetry, as is the case with all the circus animals. Being able to carry enough water for an elephant to drink is a hopeless task, a metaphor for the overwhelming pressures that all the characters face during the height of the Depression Era, an inescapably defeatist time.
Matt Murphy for MurphyMade
Zachary Keller, Connor Sullivan, Helen Krushinski and the national tour cast of the Broadway musical “Water for Elephants” at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale. (Matt Murphy for MurphyMade/Courtesy)
Again, sounds like a major downer, doesn’t it?
This cast (non-Equity though you’d never ever know it) walks that tightrope, performing with bravura, singing with crystalline precision and thunderous boom — somehow making it all less overwhelmingly sad through their collective charisma, the desperation and cruelty dialed down just enough to keep the edge, the cut.
What’s left is a powerful musical that touches your heart, tickles your ribs, caresses your face, dazzles your eyes and then … ever so gently and gracefully … sets you back down into your world.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “Water for Elephants”
WHEN: Through Sunday, Nov. 23
WHERE: Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
COST: $48.68-$172.58
INFORMATION: 954-462-0222 (press 1); browardcenter.org
Matt Murphy for MurphyMade
Connor Sullivan, Helen Krushinski and Zachary Keller in “Water for Elephants.” (Matt Murphy for MurphyMade/Courtesy)
Matt Murphy for MurphyMade
Helen Krushinski and Zachary Keller in the Broadway national tour of “Water for Elephants,” which plays the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale Nov. 11-23. (Matt Murphy for MurphyMade/Courtesy)