Photo courtesy of Loretta Larraga
THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN
This project is currently on hold and we do not know if or when we will pick it up again. It was delayed because of the church's need to focus on the capital campaign, and the writers have since turned to other projects. We're leaving this page up for now, since we're not really quite ready to bury it entirely. If you have questions about the project, you can reach us at nancy@holytrinitymusic.com.
What's it about?
Why we chose Princess & the Goblin
Why we had to adapt the novel
1992 animated film not recommended
Detailed synopsisThe Princess and the Goblin is based on a classic children's novel by George MacDonald (1824-1905). In our adaptation, Irene is the princess of a country in a desperate war with its neighbor. Helfer is the half-breed prince of the goblins who were driven underground long ago but want to live in the open once more. Aided by a mysterious Grandmother, these two young people struggle to unite their warring cultures before a misguided plot destroys them all.
Why did we choose The Princess & the Goblin?We wanted a story that had an interesting Christian subtext without being a Bible story or a story that was overtly preachy (preachiness is death to drama). George MacDonald, who wrote the original novel, was a minister in the Congregational Church in Scotland in the mid-nineteenth century, and his books incorporate Christian images and concepts in a fairy-tale world. MacDonald was one of the great inspirations for both C.S. Lewis, who went on to write the Narnia series, and J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of the Rings. For more about George MacDonald, see the Wikipedia article.
Both Charles and I loved this book as children and never forgot the quintessential image of Irene following her grandmother's thread, the thread of faith, deep into the mountain to save Curdie.
Unfortunately the story required extensive adaptation in order to make it suitable for the stage. There were two major problems:
The first is that the heroine, Irene, is a child of about eight, too young to drive the plot and too young to make reasonably mature assessments of the world around her. That isn't so bad in a novel, where the author is always present to explain. But in a play, especially in a musical, the main character has to have the power to make things happen, and children are forced to rely on the adults around them. Therefore, in our version, Irene is in her late teens, old enough to take charge of her own destiny.
The second problem is that while the original novel is lovely in many ways, it was written in the 1870s when even well-intentioned people were a lot less sensitive about racism and colonialism. In the novel, the goblins are portrayed as grotesque, backward and evil by nature, and the author shows no compunction about drowning them all at the end of the book. Being accustomed to fairy tale "bad guys" who by convention deserve to come to a bad end, I didn't immediately recognize this as genocide. But all you have to do is imagine your children playing the role of the goblins and the problem becomes painfully clear.
Therefore, we had to change the story so that the goblins would be more complex and sympathetic and the audience would understand how things looked from both the human and the goblin points of view. The problem Irene faces in our version is not how to escape or destroy the goblins but how to co-exist with them.
The resulting story is therefore quite different from the original novel. But we still have goblins living underground and miners living near a mountain castle where the princess Irene comes to live. The goblins still concoct a nefarious plot involving water, Irene still meets her grandmother in a tower she can't always find, and the grandmother still gives her the thread of faith, which she follows to save Curdie.
But Lootie, instead of being an unimaginative nanny, is a local girl who tries to impress the captain of the guard at the castle by taking responsibility for teaching the princess how to survive away from court. Helfer, the goblin prince, now has a pet "cob" named Penny whose loyalty to her master's cause almost costs her her life, and the Grandmother has at least one trick up her sleeve that isn't in the book. The goblin king has a painful secret, his son Helfer is half-human and is torn between his goblin and human heritage, and his step-mother, the current goblin queen, wonders whether either one of them is really acting in the best interests of their people.
Have we seen the 1992 animated film of Princess and the Goblin?Alas, yes, and we found it hideous in terms of the art and offensive in terms of the content. The grandmother (who functions like the Holy Spirit in the novel) has been turned into a ditzy fairy-godmother, the goblins are made disgusting in a modern and rather sexual way quite alien to the book. Some children may find it scary, and no children need to have their imaginations filled with ugly, tawdry, pointless images like this. And, need we say, it is completely unlike our adaptation in either plot or in tone.
Detailed plot summary (as it stands in March 2010)Princess Irene has been forced to flee when the city where she lives is attacked by a foreign army (the Westlings). Her father has sent her with a trusted soldier, Captain Leonard, to live incognito in the remote mountain village of Lunegard, where her only companions will be the families who work in the local silver mine. Lootie, the village schoolteacher, tries to teach Irene everyday skills so that she can escape discovery. But Irene, who longs to be a queen worthy of succeeding her father, is more interested in standing up for the miners’ interests against the goblins.
The goblin people live in caverns inside the mountain, and the best veins of silver run through their territory. Irene tries to persuade them to let the villagers mine that silver but the goblins refuse. This is not because they value the silver, but because they don’t want the “Uplanders” to discover the new weapon they have almost completed. The weapon, which they refer to as the “waterworks,” is a pumping station designed to divert rainwater from hundreds of streams and collect it in a high-altitude reservoir. If the goblins release the water in the reservoir, it will devastate the country below. The goblin plan is to use the stored water as a bargaining tool to regain the right to live on the surface as they did generations ago.
Lady Moon, the goddess to whom both humans and goblins pray, has been trying discreetly to draw Irene together with Helfer, the Goblin prince, who is half human. But when Penny, Helfer’s beloved pet, is nearly killed in a misunderstanding with the miner boy Curdie, it looks as if all her plans will fall apart. The angry goblins now plan to release the water without warning, retaliating in one moment for all the wrongs they feel have been done to them. To prevent this, Lady Moon reveals herself directly to Irene (though she calls herself Irene’s “grandmother”), placing on Irene’s finger a ring linked to a magic thread having the power to lead its wearer home to safety. She tells Irene that it will lead her to the reclusive Goblin King.
Irene follows her grandmother’s thread into the heart of the mountain. On the way, she rescues Curdie, who has been found spying on the goblins and shut up to die in a prison of rock. The thread then leads Irene and Curdie to the waterworks, where Helfer takes Irene prisoner. Curdie he sends out with a ransom message designed to lure the Upland king and his army to a location where they will get the full brunt of the flood.
Alone in the goblin prison, Irene nearly despairs of succeeding in her mission, but Penny, healed by Lady Moon, comes to let her out, and together they find the Goblin King. From him Irene learns the critical piece of information, that the Goblin King’s first wife was Irene’s father’s elder sister, and by the rule of absolute primogeniture, this means that Helfer, not Irene’s own father, should be sitting on the Upland throne. When the Goblin King is murdered by his ambitious wife, only Irene is left knowing the truth about Helfer’s identity.
The final confrontation takes place underground at the waterworks. Captain Leonard, leading the villagers in the search for Irene, is joined not only by Irene’s father, but by the Westlings who now control the country and who intercepted Captain Leonard’s messages. The goblin queen is killed by a human archer before she can open the reservoir. The goblins are ready to retaliate but Irene tells everyone who Helfer really is, bending her knee to him in public allegiance, even though this ends her own hope of being Queen. Impressed by her honesty, Helfer orders a controlled release of the water that will restore the river surrounding the capital, destroying the Westling cannon in the process and making the city defensible again. The story of Helfer’s birth also lays to rest an old grudge the Westlings had against Irene’s father. With Helfer holding all the cards, he orders a great feast for goblins, Westlings and Uplanders alike. With Lady Moon, they welcome in a new era of peace and reconciliation.
