The Other Coraline

Not the book, but the New York stage production.

... Directed by Leigh Silverman, with songs by Mr. Merritt and a book by Mr. Greenspan, “Coraline” is a grown-up exercise in story theater that asks its audience to take a childlike leap of faith into fantasy. But the invitation is couched with such self-conscious craftsmanship that you wind up frozen in admiration of its elegance and inventiveness instead of taking that necessary step into make-believe ...

In translating Mr. Gaiman’s story to the stage, the creators of the musical “Coraline” emphasize the telling over the tale. Christine Jones’s attic-of-the-mind set is filled with an assortment of decrepit-looking pianos of varying shapes and sizes. And the show begins with ensemble members plinking isolated notes on different pianos. It’s as if a group of children were randomly discovering music and its powers to summon an enveloping atmosphere ...

There is much wit in this sophisticated rendering of a child’s tinkering with music. But the show’s aural landscape never varies much, even as Coraline crosses between her two lives, and the music can sometimes feel more metronomic than hypnotic ...

Unlike Mr. Gaiman’s novel or Henry Selick’s recent film adaptation, Coraline’s one-child fight against evil never summons much suspense and almost never involves you emotionally.

You can't keep a good story confined to a limited number of platforms, it seems. The next venue will probably be as a comic book ... or graphic novel.