Children’s Theatre’s ‘Last Stop on Market Street’: Kind of a charmer

You know the people I’m talking about, the scowling guy with tattoo-covered arms and combat boots or the old Russian babushka with the scarf and the jar inexplicably full of live butterflies. You move one seat away, smiling politely to avoid confrontation: “Just giving us some space — not that there’s anything wrong with you, of course….”

But what if you didn’t?

That’s the question behind “Last Stop on Market Street,” in which C.J. and his Nana travel from church one Sunday to an unnamed destination, spending most of their time on a bus with strangers. “Don’t ask, won’t know,” she reminds her grandson, whenever anxiety grips him. So he does ask, and he realizes this Sunday afternoon that life is full of unexpected beauty — if not in the grim surroundings at the end of the line, then in the faces of those who wait there.

Writer Gloria Bond Clunie and director Chris Parks use Matt de la Peña’s original story as a jumping-off point for flights of fancy. An image of a dragon in one of Christian Robinson’s illustrations for the book inspires a long, strange sequence where C.J. daydreams of battling a dragon with light sabers, then psychoanalyzes him and convinces him to blow bubbles instead. (Amazingly to me, first-graders in the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte school audience didn’t mind this diversion, perhaps because of the comic physicality.)

This show kicks off CTC’s Kindness Project, three plays (and perhaps more) over two seasons demonstrating that virtue. Clunie and Parks have overlaid the plot of the slender book with 18 acts of kindness that pop up around the main action. Those can be as subtle as someone offering a tissue to a sneezer or placing a lap rug over the legs of a shivering man in a wheelchair. These things aren’t spoken of, which reinforces the idea that kindness should be automatic; it doesn’t have to be celebrated every time it occurs.

Yet the main story still follows the bouncy, open-minded C.J. (irrepressible Rahsheem Shabaz, making naivete appealing) and down-to-Earth Nana (Corlis Hayes, doing the same for matriarchal wisdom). You can believe in them whether they’re holding a quiet dialogue on a park bench or rapping and breakdancing in an ode to pickles. Nana’s not Yoda in a dress, just a woman who has learned to see and think clearly about the world.

Five other actors embody a host of characters, zip pieces of Anita Tripathi’s set on and off and provide special effects. (My favorite: Umbrellas that open and close to represent the dragon’s flexing wings.) Though the message may be simple, Parks doesn’t encourage broad performances: The bus riders seem unfamiliar and exotic but not exaggerated.

Every so often, Parks delivers the message in the quietest way. A homeless woman pulls books from a city trash can, marveling at her luck, then fetches out a discarded sandwich. “She ate from garbage!” whispered a horrified little boy in front of me. C.J. gives this woman a puzzled look, starts to ask Nana why this has to be, then cuts himself off. The act of kindness here is simply noticing — and remembering.