By Stephen Kaplan
Directed by Audrey Alford
With Jamie Geiger, Jenn Remke, Brian Michael, Jason Allan Kennedy George, Alexander Bello, Kelley Selznick, Katie Braden, Danie Steel
A Real Boy tells the story of two puppets who adopt a human child. When the young boy starts growing strings, his kindergarten teacher takes it upon herself to save him. This satiric play explores life for those on the fringe of society and the tensions that arise when others try to fix their “problems.”

At the 59E59 Theater’s world premiere of A Real Boy, the setting is a kindergarten classroom, but it’s clear that in Stephen Kaplan’s play, lessons of acceptance cannot be learned as easy as A-B-C. Two parents, who also happen to be puppets, Peter (Brian Michael) and Mary Ann Myers (Jason Allan Kennedy George) clash with the earnest, but often heavy-handed kindergarten teacher, Miss Terry (Jenn Remke), about how they are raising their adopted son, Max (Kelley Selznick, in the performance I attend). Miss Terry worries about Max, expressing concern that he only has and colors with black and white crayons, thus limiting his creativity and potential. Peter states that black and white is the way puppets choose to live: simplified. And indeed, the puppets themselves are monochromatic and their home, which is offset from the main space, the colorful classroom, and resembles a puppetry stage, is also starkly without hues. Why should they introduce these complexities to their son? The school should respect their beliefs, and protect him from being bullied by the other children: “If we were Jewish I would hope that you wouldn’t feed him a bacon shrimp cheeseburger just to open up his eyes so …Read more