Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s world-premiere staging of “The Thing About Jellyfish” is really two kinds of plays fused into one. The first is a touching drama, adapted by Keith Bunin from Ali Benjamin’s 2015 novel of the same name, about a lonely seventh-grader named Suzy who is grieving the death of her onetime best friend and trying to navigate her way through adolescence and her one-of-a-kind brilliant mind.
The other is a gleaming, high-tech theatrical experience full of gorgeous, crystalline projections, set pieces in constant motion across the stage and locations that change instantly from a suburban home to a Chinese restaurant to the nether regions of the ever-spinning Internet.
The contrast between the intimacy of Suzy’s personal story and the flashy theatrical whiz-bang doesn’t always serve the emotional through-line of director Tyne Rafaeli’s production. A tension grows through the show’s nearly two hours (with no intermission) between Suzy’s compelling story and the distraction of all the energetic visual hyperactivity happening around her.
What holds everything together is the remarkable central performance by Matilda Lawler as Suzy. This gifted young actor (seen in the HBO series “Station 11” and “The Gilded Age”) is on stage for practically the entire show and powerfully conveys the complexities of a 12-year-old in crisis.
In addition to all the usual horrors of the purgatory we call middle school, Suzy is contending with divorcing parents (played with compassion by Stephanie Janssen and Andy Grotelueschen) and the drowning death of her best friend since kindergarten, Franny (a deft Kayla Teruel). More than just the shocking death, though, Suzy is also trying to understand why she and Franny had begun moving in different directions. While Suzy was still interested in gleaning every interesting fact about every creature ever, Franny was thinking about hair and clothes and boys.
In her confusion about so much in her life, the usually talkative Suzy simply stops speaking. She withdraws into a world of scientific research that she hopes will help her understand what really happened to Franny, and that research leads her to one of the world’s oldest, most resilient species: the jellyfish.
Lawler’s Suzy is a poignant mass of fierce intellect and crushing vulnerability, of resolute determination and emotional chaos. She’s as fascinating as she is endearing, and her journey into the landscape of grief is the play’s greatest asset. The other young performers, including Antonio Watson as Suzy’s enthusiastic lab partner, Lexi Perkel as popular girl Aubrey and Jasper Bermudez as gross-out boy Dylan, defy all kid-actor stereotypes and come across as completely relatable tweens.
In addition to her sympathetic, if emotionally messy, parents, Suzy has the support of an insightful science teacher played by Christiana Clark, who also plays a therapist, Franny’s grieving mom and so many other people you lose count. But even though there are sensible adults around her, Suzy still feels the need to create an imaginary friend who takes the form of a real-life Australian toxinologist named Jamie Seymour, who has a special interest in jellyfish.
Played by Robert Stanton, Jamie hovers around and helps Suzy pretend she’s working on a scientific project, when really she’s trying to sort out the emotions surrounding her unresolved break with Franny and how death has rendered that break permanent. But this imaginary relationship is emotionally inert and undercuts Suzy’s emotional progress, which is also slightly derailed by a running time that is at least 15 minutes too long.
As technically impressive as “The Thing About Jellyfish” is, with gorgeous images of jellyfish floating through Lucy MacKinnon’s artfully constructed video designs and the graceful athleticism of Franny swimming through the sky, it all comes down to Suzy. We are invested in this budding genius reclaiming her voice and finding a way to move forward into what will undoubtedly be an astonishing, consequential life.
There’s a vibe to “Jellyfish” that’s kind of “Dear Evan Hansen” meets the kinetic stage adaptation of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” in the way that it tries to take an audience into the whirling mind of a young person outside the norm. But truly, the magic here is Matilda Lawler and her heartfelt ability to convey an epic emotional journey with the simplest of special effects: her honesty, her power and her extraordinary talent.
Chad Jones has been writing about Bay Area theater since 1992; theaterdogs.net.
‘THE THING ABOUT JELLYFISH’
Adapted from the Ali Benjamin novel by Keith Bunin; presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Through: March 9
Where: Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $25-$134; www.berkeleyrep.org