Support Local Arts And Go See 'The Girl Who Drank The Moon'

All fairy tales have darkness in them. It's how the darkness dances with the light that makes it interesting. And the story in Kelly Barnhill's Newbery-winning fantasy novel, The Girl Who Drank The Moon, is a near perfect waltz, with plenty of delightful weirdness besides. And now, a theatrical adaptation staged at a gleaming new center for the arts in Orem, brings the story, and its magic, to life for a one-time-only production Utah audiences shouldn't dare to miss.

It is the story of a town, known as the Protectorate, that must sacrifice a newborn every year to satisfy the witch who lives in the woods. There is a witch, but the sacrifice is a ruse for another who feasts of the sorrow it inflicts. Meanwhile, there is a witch. And she does take the babies. Unaware of the sacrifice, she assumes this sorrowful town abandons its babies. So she saves them, year after year, adopting them out to loving families in friendlier towns nearby.

One year, a mother revolts, is imprisoned, and goes mad. And the witch—in saving the child—mistakenly feeds it moonlight, which fills her with magic. This is, cleverly, where the show begins, relying on the developing plot to fill in the context. The rest is a tale of discovering the magic within—not only in the girl who drank the moon—and just how far anyone is wiling to go to change the traditions they've always known.

Kelly Barnhill's best-selling Newbery winner, The Girl Who Drank The Moon, has been adapted for the stage by noted local playwright Melissa Leilani Larson (Pilot Program, Sweetheart Come, Jane and Emma), and stars a recognizable Utah actress Barta Heiner (Diantha's Crossing, Once I Was A Beehive) as the loving witch in a story that is a fantastical allegory on the feminine divine as well as a moving fairy tale on love and loss, and love again.

The play itself, is a textbook example for precisely what black box theatre should be. The staging is mystical and inventive, with an unconventional stage that truly invokes the boggy swamp it's meant to be. It's family-friendly, with the dark edges levied by a playful dragon for comedic relief. But like most Newbery stories, it really plays to the middle-reader age, though not exclusively. That is, simply to say, if you have preteens, you should make it a point to attend.

The Girl Who Drank The Moon is a unique and intimate theatrical experience Utah theater-goers can, and ought, to enjoy in the beautiful new Noorda performing arts center at UVU.