Theatre West Stages Inspiring, Poetic Children’s Story

The second production of Theatre West Youth Theatre’s inaugural season is an inspired choice: poet James Dickey’s rich epic for children, “Bronwen, the Traw and the Shape-Shifter.”

Dickey’s fantasy in verse has been turned into a solo performance by adult professional Bridget Hanley, and although there were a few bumpy moments in the show’s matinee premiere, she engagingly brings to life the heroic battle waged by Bronwen, a little girl who “lived on the morning-glow edge” and liberates a kingdom of flying squirrels from the villain Shape-Shifter and the evil “All-Dark” that “hung like the wrong side of brightness.”

During the opening show last week, the physical demands of the role at times left Hanley breathless, and unintentional tangles with a set piece and a voluminous scarf briefly broke her rhythm, but the fleeting glitches didn’t mar Hanley’s delivery of Dickey’s spellbinding language or her performance as Bronwen, and also as narrator and a pair of endearing flying squirrels.

Directed with clarity by John Gallogly, the tale unfolds from Bronwen’s sunlit days working the earth in her flower garden with her “traw”--a trowel-like, clawed tool made by her father--to the magical night when the flying squirrels come to her window and carry her on a net of moss through the night sky to their beleaguered kingdom.

Conveying the poem’s sense of wonder and its gentle humor, Hanley makes the most of her turns as the squirrel king’s messenger and the aged king himself, who implores Bronwen to fight the “monstrous, one-footed terror,” the All-Dark, using her sunflower hat, her soon-to-be magic traw and her “gumption.”

As Bronwen strikes a hard-fought blow for the squirrels and “all the frightened children” of the world, audiences can savor Dickey’s language.

Lee Bauer designed the simple set; Nicholas Pike’s music and sound complement the mood.

* “Bronwen, the Traw and the Shape-Shifter,” Theatre West, 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West, Los Angeles, Sundays, 12:30 p.m. through March 8. $8. (213) 851-7977. Running time: 45 minutes.