E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web has been a beloved classic of children’s storytelling since 1952, so much so that Alberta Theatre Projects has presented it twice before.

Returning for a third time, after runs in 2014 and 2017 on ATP’s Martha Cohen Stage, this in-demand production has sought to balance what Calgarians love about the story, with a modern sensibility of what makes it fun and entertaining.

Owing to the improv background of director Rebecca Northan and actor Ellis Lalonde—both veterans of Loose Moose Theatre—it has a fresh whimsy that doesn’t shy away from the darker side of the original story.

“We did a preview last night, and a long-time ATP subscriber who saw the previous versions came up and said, ‘I’ve seen them all, and this one has the most imagination and invention. But it also is the one that has felt the most like it felt when I read the book,’ and I thought, well, that’s high praise,” said Northan.

“It’s pretty great to be at the helm of this classic show at the holidays. Then it also comes with a bit of pressure knowing it’s been done twice before, and you’re like, ‘oh, should we should we somehow reinvent the wheel?'”

That reinvention does mean some changes to the work. The classic narrators have been replaced with three more bratty and hilarious chickens all the more fitting with the barnyard theme.

“I thought, I don’t want to see three grown-ups dressed as farmers narrating. That’s not interesting to me. So, immediately, I called Haysam Kadri, [ATP’s] artistic director, and I said, ‘I’m going to need three chicken puppets,'” Northan said.

“Before I had actors, I was like ‘I’m going to need chickens.'”

So, hilarious was that choice, Northan said riffing off Lalonde while speaking to LWC, that she joked that they would show up in every ATP show going forward.

“I love the chicken chorus. I want them to have their own spin-off YouTube channel,” she said.

But that fun also plays into the theme of the barnyard animals themselves, who are excellently anthropomorphized by the cast and through costume design by Ralamy Kneeshaw, while also retaining that sense of being real animals with their own motivations.

That includes not always being friendly about the intended end for Wilbur by the story’s Arable family of farmers.

“The very best children’s stories have an element of darkness and fear in them, because that’s life. If we sanitize our narratives, then we are not preparing children for the real world. So, we need to be frank about it, and it’s actually one of the things I love about the book, and I love about the script, is that there is no tidying up or cleaning or softening,” said Northan.

“Wilbur encounters a barnyard of animals, and they’re not all nice. Some of them are mean, and some of them tease him, and some of them bully him, and some of them are friends, but at the end of the day, they all live together in the same barnyard. They do, through Charlotte’s example, change their attitude and come together and work together, but they don’t change their personalities.”

Creating a lovable pig that is saved by a spider

For Lalonde, creating the character of Wilbur comes from finding the balance between the character’s humanity and the mannerisms of a barnyard animal.

“Obviously, pigs don’t talk, so that’s not going to work for a character who has to speak. That’s not something to really draw on. But I watched a lot of videos of pigs and how pigs move around, and it’s very nose-based. It’s a lot of smelling,” Lalonde said.

“I think most creatures, besides humans, are very nose-based in terms of how they interpret the world. So, a lot of Wilbur movements are just like, constantly, just moving my nose out.”

Joking about it, Northan said that if only LWC readers could see how he was moving his nose about.

“I’m just gonna audio describe the unbelievable acting that’s happening right next to me. Perfectly realistic. If you could see Ellis right now, you would think, is that actually a pig?” she laughed.

“As a writer-creator, I really value playful misbehaviour, and I like taking a text and saying to the artists ‘let’s get inspired by what’s here and ask ourselves, well, what else could be here?'”

Among those changes, she said, was to Charlotte herself, played by ATP veteran Julie Orton (To The Light, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead).

“in the previous two productions, Charlotte has been a circus performer, and has either been on aerial rigging or silks, and we certainly have our Charlotte able to do some stuff like that. But Julie Orton is playing Charlotte, and Julie is an incredibly physical performer,” Northan said.

“One of the things I said at the beginning to the team here was, I want the set to be like a jungle gym, and because I didn’t want our spider to just be stuck in the web all the time or stuck hanging from the ceiling. So, this Charlotte moves around the world far more than previous productions, which is what spiders do anyway.”

What that means for audiences is a very different dynamic between Wilbur and Charlotte on stage, Lalonde said.

“There’s a lot of this sort of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock thing—not necessarily in terms of how they think, but like these are two incredibly different creatures,” he said.

“Their lives are on a completely different cycle. One of them is tiny and one of them is very large. One of them makes webs, and one of them cannot. There’s a lot of differences between these two, but there’s a lot of nice little dialogues that they just have about those differences.”

As for what she hoped that audiences would take away from ATP’s latest production of Charlotte’s Web, Northan said that she hoped it would be that message of finding friendship despite differences.

“I hope that older folks get to revisit a really sweet sense of nostalgia around the book. For me, it’s really a book about friendship and interspecies friendship, and what that translates to in the real world, in terms of acceptance and tolerance, I think is pretty important,” she said.

“It does it though without hammering you over the head with it.”

Charlotte’s Web runs from Nov. 26 to Dec. 29 at the Martha Cohen Theatre. Tickets are on sale at albertatheatreprojects.com/whats-on/2024-25/charlottes-web.

Photos from ATP’s Charlotte’s Web