Call it a kids show if you must. But know this: Even if you are generations beyond your single-digit years, “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas” will fill you with giddy joy and have you snort-laughing with velocity enough to require a tissue. If you find no joy in the spectacle of a squirrel juggling act that ends with the lead squirrel doing a full-on deathdrop while their furry charges orbit above, you are having a bad day indeed.
The human/puppet hybrid production that opened this week in the Studebaker Theatre has a lengthy origin story: It started in 1971 as a children’s book by Russell and Lillian Hoban. In 1977 Jim Henson — father of the muppet kingdom that started in 1969 with the debut of “Sesame Street” — turned the book into a television special.
Now, the tale of an impoverished otter overcoming self-doubt and disappointment just in time for Christmas is a musical (book by Timothy Allen McDonald and Christopher Gattelli, music and lyrics by Paul Williams), where talented humans share the stage with a menagerie of forest critters created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
From start to finish, the 75-minute tale will have you deep in your feelings when you’re not chortling at the ridiculous creativity embodied, by, for example, a mink gyrating through a burlesque routine that would make Gypsy Rose Lee proud.
Directed and choreographed by Gattelli, the tale is narrated by the wise Doc Bullfrog (Jordan Brownlee) and revolves around the young otter Emmet (Andy Mientus) and his widowed Ma (Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone), a washerwoman (washer otter?) who barely makes ends meet.
As Christmas looms, Emmet dreams of buying Ma a piano while Ma yearns to buy Emmet a guitar. When the unctuous Mayor Fox (Kevin Covert) announces a talent show with a $50 grand prize, Emmet and Ma each make separate, secret plans to enter: Emmet joins a jugband that also includes Wendell Porcupine (Steven Huynh), Harvey Beaver (Ben Mathew) and Charlie Muskrat (Nick Cearley). Ma sews a new dress and prepares to perform an aria.
The plot sounds potentially childish. But Gattelli and the ensemble — including an unseen corps of puppeteers that voice and animate a menagerie of expressive animals ranging from placid herons to headbanging lizards and snakes — make it something splendid.
“Emmet Otter” has a pleasing if not particularly memorable score. But the music is powered by an ensemble that treats every moment and note with care and creativity. The opening “Waterville” is a rousing introduction to the characters and locale, humans and puppets alike creating a natural habitat that includes an all-animal kazoo band.
Our narrator for the evening is Doc Bullfrog, a puppet Brownlee instills with gravitas and droll wisdom, whether he’s nudging the story along or plugging his cafe.
As Emmet, Mientus has an earnest innocence perfectly suited to both the belting ballad “Where the River Meets the Sea,” and the toe-tapping, water-borne hootenanny “Ain’t No Hole in the Washtub.”
Monteleone’s Ma is a comforting maternal figure with a heart of gold. The character lacks depth, but when Monteleone breaks out the anthemic “Our World,” Ma becomes a force for grace, beauty and optimism.
Mayor Fox’s talent show is an outlandish delight, each number a showstopper. Sawyer Smith’s Madame Squirrel jump-starts the shenanigans with a high-stepping, death-dropping routine that is a true gift to Chicagoland this holiday season.
