A New Stage for Author of ‘Freak’

The first question at play auditions is usually “Can he act?” But when casting the role of Max Kane for the world premiere of “Freak the Mighty,” running through Saturday at Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, another consideration ran a close second: “Can he lift?”

The reason, as anybody who’s read Rodman Philbrick’s young adults’ story “Freak the Mighty” knows, is that middle school misfit Max spends much of his time carrying classmate Kevin Dillon around on his shoulders. The precocious Kevin is afflicted with a form of crippling dwarfism known as Morquio syndrome. Tormented by schoolyard bullies, brawny Max and little Kevin reinvent themselves as Freak the Mighty, a towering doer of good deeds inspired by King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

“My instant concern with this play from the beginning was, you don’t want some guy who’s going to throw his back out. Whoever plays Max has got to be able to pick up Kevin. If he can’t do that, it’s not going to work,” Philbrick said. “It’s the core of who these kids are. They see themselves as one character who is more than the two of them combined.”

Marlowe Harris and Max Diamond, both 15, represent the latest incarnation of odd couple Max and Kevin. First introduced in 1993 with the publication of “Freak the Mighty,” the characters were later portrayed by Elden Henson and Kieran Culkin in the 1998 film version titled “The Mighty,” which also starred Sharon Stone.

The real models date back to the mid-’80s when Philbrick, 50, was toiling on a mystery novel in Portsmouth, N.H. “I lived down the street from this junior high school,” Philbrick said by phone from his winter home in the Key West, Fla., area. “Every day at 2:30 when school let out, the kids would go screaming up the street, and I happened to notice these two kids who sort of stuck out. One was this great, huge kid. He had a little friend who used crutches sometimes, and other times the big kid would put him on his shoulders and carry him around.”

The image stuck, and years later, in his first try at a children’s story, Philbrick came up with his tale. The book won the 1993 California Young Readers Medal and became a favorite of school librarians. Teachers reported that even reluctant readers seemed eager to make their way through the pages of “Freak the Mighty.”

As the book’s popularity spread, school drama departments began asking Philbrick for a theatrical adaptation. “I didn’t have anything, so I’d tell them, ‘Just take it from the book.’”

That changed last August. Crossroads drama teacher Scott Weintraub, on vacation in New England, stopped by to visit Philbrick, whom he’d met in 1979 while working as an actor at Theatre-by-the-Sea in Portsmouth. Philbrick mentioned he’d been toying with the idea of adapting his own book for the stage. Weintraub responded: “If you write it, we’ll do it,” recalled Philbrick. Emboldened by his friend’s promise, Philbrick quickly wrote the play.

Then he started over.

“I’ve always known that writing plays is very difficult, because I’ve written three or four that have never been produced,” he laughs. “I’m not a playwright; I’m a writer who loves theater.”

Not surprisingly, Philbrick’s initial adaptation reflected a writerly approach: actor reciting text. “The first draft was mostly Max reading to the audience, a little like ‘Our Town’ or something,” Philbrick recalled. “Then I realized that wasn’t going to work.”

Translating his book for the stage required fresh thinking, the author said. “I had to tell the story with the same events in roughly the same order, but I just couldn’t steal from the book and stage the whole thing or it would be three hours long,” he said. “I had to pick the most essential scenes.”

Philbrick, accustomed to controlling the universe of his own stories, had his own ideas about the physical staging for “Freak the Mighty.” But while visiting Santa Monica last month to watch early rehearsals, he realized theater requires far more give and take than solitary novel-writing.

“Scott started blocking scenes, and I thought, ‘Well, this isn’t exactly what I was thinking.’ Then I just shut my mouth. I know next to nothing about lights or sound cues, and these people knew what they were doing. That gave me confidence, to know that if I culled the right stuff and could write a dramatically involving scene and have the characters speak in some kind of real way, then the people staging the play would make it work as a production. So I had to step back and say ‘You guys do it.’”

Plus, he said of Crossroads, “This is not your normal high school.”

“When I went out there last month, I looked around and said to myself, ‘OK, which of these people am I going to see on a sitcom in five years?’ This is a place where the actors’ and producers’ children go, and they take drama very seriously.”

Some of Crossroads’ show biz-connected parents have, in fact, contributed to the show. Jazz composer Peter Erskine wrote incidental music. Movement specialist Jean-Louis Rodrigue, fresh from coaching Hilary Swank in “The Affair of the Necklace,” offered the actors pointers, Weintraub said, on how “character can inform movement.”

Production values and strong performances are well and good, but Philbrick knows young readers can be finicky about adaptations. He reported that his niece carved up the “Harry Potter” movie for not being faithful enough to the book.

“Most of the kids who see the play are going to be familiar with the book, so I really had to tell the same story,” said Philbrick, who cut material in crafting his 75-minute, two-act drama. But, he said, “Freak’s” essence remains intact.

“I have vivid memories of junior high school,” he said. “I didn’t quite know how to deal with kids and make friends and all of that. If you talked to people who knew me at the time they’d think I was a popular kid in school. But boy, I didn’t feel that. Most kids [at that age] have those days where they feel like they didn’t have a friend in the world, and those feelings stay with you, which is why I think adults identify with the book. And if you’re in eighth grade when you’re reading it, and you’ve just had one of those days, apparently it can really hit home.”

Philbrick has no grand illusions for his stage version of “Freak the Mighty.” But he does hope, after kinks have been ironed out during the Crossroads run, to make the piece available to schools. He’s also written a shorter one-act version of the play for younger grade school audiences.

One thing Philbrick didn’t touch was the story’s ending. Said Weintraub, “The thing I love about the play is, it’s not this happy saccharine kiddie play. It’s for young people and yet it’s dark. It’s sad, but not maudlin.”

Weintraub also appreciates that “Freak the Mighty,” with its three-dimensional teenage characters, exists as a play at all. “There really is a dearth of good material for young actors to do,” he said. “There’s nothing so ridiculous as doing ‘Death of a Salesman’ with ninth-graders. ‘Oh look, there’s a kid with lines on his face and gray in the hair; they’re dressing up in mom and dad’s clothes.’ With ‘Freak the Mighty,’ these kids are getting to play people their own age.”

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“Freak the Mighty” at Crossroads Theatre,

Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences, 1714 21st St., Santa Monica. Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. Admission is $10, $8 for students and

senior citizens. Call (310) 829-7391 Ext. 345 for reservations.