Nicholas Lloyd Webber, Dennis Garnhum and James D. Reid at Theatre Calgary. A new stage adaptation of The Little Prince will debut at Theatre Calgary in January 2016.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's masterpiece The Little Prince explores, among other things, the problem of preserving a beloved but ephemeral companion – in the prince's case, a rose.
Composer Nicholas Lloyd Webber (yes, Andrew's son) and librettist James D. Reid have been working on another problem: how to adapt the juggernaut parable for the stage. A 2011 adaptation, staged in Belfast, received mixed reviews. Now they're getting another shot. A thoroughly re-envisioned musical – so radically different they're calling it a world premiere – will debut at Theatre Calgary in January, 2016.
How does a British adaptation of a French classic land in Calgary? It began in a pub: Theatre Calgary artistic director Dennis Garnhum, in London for the 2012 Christmas holidays, arranged to meet a friend's fiancé at Joe Allen. The fiancé brought along another friend – Lloyd Webber. They were hitting it off socially, and eventually the Little Prince project came up.
"Two days later his producers met me in a hotel lobby and passed me a package," Garnhum recounts. "And I listened to [the music] on the plane home and it was extraordinary." They went back and forth for a couple of years – literally; the creative team attended opening night of Anne of Green Gables – the Musical last year in Calgary, and Garnhum returned to the West End last December for a Little Prince workshop.
That workshop revealed a new focus on the pilot character, the loss of his imagination and his journey back toward his inner little prince. Afterward, they dined with Saint-Exupéry's great-nephew, Olivier d'Agay, who oversees the rights. "And he made it very clear," says Garnhum. "He feels like this is the first adaptation of the piece that gets at the heart of the intention – which is the man's struggle."
Marsha Lederman