Of course, as pretty much any human parent could tell you, raising children doesn’t always work out exactly how you plan it. Kids will not always do as they are told, or want to lead the exact life that their parents might have predetermined for them. Instead, both parents and children end up making mistakes and learning a lot from the imperfect, sometimes painful, often exhilarating process of growing up.

John Caird and Stephen Schwartz’s musical Children of Eden begins “in the beginning” and retells the story of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and the family of Noah, albeit with quite a few alterations, focusing on the parent-child relationship in these unusual but most famous “first families.” There are a few too many clichés and hokey dialogue that mars some of what would be the most moving moments of the play, and the plot lacks much subtlety as it delivers its message, but it’s certainly good at heart with some creative storytelling, intriguing insights, a few very touching moments, great dancing, and some gorgeous music!

The cast is filled with remarkable singers. David Engel and Moonlight regular Bets Malone shine in the leading roles, David Engel’s rich voice and sensitive, innocent, sometimes humorous performance is a treat from the beginning to the end. Bets Malone is both convincingly innocent and amusingly curious as she finds both a lot of beauty and a lot of questions in this new world God has placed them in, and she delivers some of the most moving scenes as things go bad with the death of Abel and their continued separation from the Father. Speaking of which, John Huntington, who is here making his fourth appearance as God (a role with no doubt a lot of pressure to do well in), offers a highly dramatic portrayal of the Father who starts out so hopeful, becomes so disappointed, and eventually must choose between destroying it all or forgiving his children and letting them be who they are.

Elsewhere, David Burnham, who replaced Donny Osmond in the national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, here fills the roles of Cain and Noah’s son Japheth – roles for which he has earned a Robby Award. He sings Cain’s and Japheth’s vocally demanding songs with an awful lot of pizzazz. In the most creative and successful plot twists, he becomes engaged to Yonah (Alexandra Auckland), a descendant of Cain, just before the ark is to disembark. The dilemma is that, although everyone in Noah’s family loves their sweet and good servant Yonah, God has forbidden any of Cain’s lineage aboard, wanting to start the new world free of the curse of the world’s first murderer. Alexandra’s singularly beautiful voice shines during the world’s darkest moments before The Flood in two sublime solos and joins with David Burnham for the duet In Whatever Time We Have.

Production runs through August 31, 2003.

Rob Hopper
National Arts Digest