Pity the background character. You know: the old guy sitting in a doorway in Cairo looking on as Indiana Jones walks by. Or the overworked bartender who hands Luke Skywalker a drink, never realizing what the fates (or the Force) have in store for the hayseed-looking kid. Or the mother lying under a beach umbrella while Tony Montana asks a bombshell if she wants to have ice cream with him and his friend.
You know. The people they don’t tell stories about.
Puffs (onstage at Grand Rapids Civic Theatre through March 12th) is about those people. In particular, it’s about the Puffs: those students at a school of magic who weren’t sorted into houses known for bravery, intelligence, or cunning. If that sounds reminiscent of Harry Potter, that’s for a good reason; Puffs is as close to a Harry Potter story as you can get without violating copyright.
Our narrator, played winningly by Kaylin McCullough, sets the scene: Wayne Hopkins (a charming, Frodo-esque Alex Cole) has started attending “a certain school of magic and magic.” He finds himself among the Puffs, a group of mostly awkward kids (my nine-year-old daughter Gemma called them “The Disappointments”). He has dreams of achieving a great destiny, but this isn’t that kind of story.
Harry Potter fans will find all sorts sly jokes to delight in, from the line about how Neville Longbottom isn’t attractive and never will be to the perilous effects of butterbeer. Harry, the hero whose success can never be in doubt, is often seen triumphing; Rachel-Fox Jacobs infuses him with joy, comically. And Josh Youngsma is very funny as the droning professor of the Dark Arts whose name, we know, is Snape.
My favorite character, maybe because she reminds me of people I went to school with myself, was Megan Jones (Grace LaFleur). Abandoned by her mother, Jones wears aggression like armor, protecting her from anyone who might otherwise get close to her.
The play has two settings, really, both expertly evoked: the mysterious world of Hogwarts and the lost realm of the 1990s. The stagecraft lavished on creating the former was smart and effective. You could see it in the Dementors, who were properly scary, and in the Mirror of Erised. The latter? Haircuts, a Nirvana shirt, a Gameboy fanny pack, more.
It’s a two-hour play, and needs to be; there’s seven books’ worth of story to tell. The characters age; they find themselves wrestling with distracting new emotions (cast member Kaitlin Beardsley is particularly great here). They deal with loss (you remember that Cedric Diggory was a Hufflepuff, no?). And danger circles above Hogwarts. Danger and death.
I think that’s what’s most surprising about Puffs, in the end: its quiet seriousness. Yes, it’s a comedy. But it has real heart, too, and a genuine story to tell: the story of those people who, despite not being the main characters, nevertheless live just as valuable lives.
You know. People like us.
Afterward, my seven-year-old, Heidi, turned to me. Her mother had declared Heidi a Hufflepuff years before.
“What’d you think?” I asked her.
She thought for a moment. “I don’t want it to be done. I want there to be more.”
Puffs
Grand Rapids Civic Theatre
March 2-12
https://www.grct.org/2022-23season/
