Wear Your Freak Flag and Embrace the Other in “Shrek - The Musical”
Shrek, the trendsetting Dreamworks motion picture has been transformed into a deeply moving and musically innovative meditation on being different, of being the freak in not conforming to society. Its message is simple: realize that others act intolerant out of fear, embrace your uniqueness even if others define it as strange, and forgive and embrace all, for we are all one.
Brian D’Arcy James, who playes the title character Shrek, has a beautiful booming voice whose timbre, in moving melodies, indicates the depth of alienation and desire to belong buried deep within his soul. In this sense, the musical adaptation of the movie adds another dimension to what was a very funny cartoon of a movie, and creates a fundamental statement, relevant for today, of reclaiming our identity, even if we feel, as defined by society that we do not fit in.
And Shrek’s alienation is echoed not only by the Princess Fiona (ably played with true comic timing by the charismatic dynamo, Sutton Foster), and Donkey (played by Daniel Breaker, who gives Eddie Murphy a run for his money), but by the whole company of fairy tale characters who have been tossed aside by society, including Ugly Duckling, Pinnochio, Peter Pan.
And even the villain, Farqhuar, becomes more loveable than in the movie version, for we recognize that he is not entirely comfortable with his meanness, and that it is driven by his own insecuities of not fitting in, by being born a midget.
A parable for us all to reclaim our sense of majesty, of who we are, in these magnificent times of change. And to accept others, even if we don’t understand them, or their differences.