NO TIME LIKE
THE TESSERACT

Almost four decades after its Lifeline
premiere, James Sie’s adaptation of
Madeleine L’Engle’s novel still enchants

Sam Hook, Amanda Link, Rohan Link Francisco, and Manali Sunkara

On Lindsay Mummert’s cool Fibonacci-esque set, a sulking Meg Murry sits, hunched over. She’s gotten into trouble at school again. Her teachers hate her, and her principal is exasperated with her. It’s been two years since her physicist father, Alex, vanished without a trace. Her mother, also a physicist, is constantly preoccupied with her research. Despite being blessed with a loving family, Meg is always angry, and she doesn’t know why. She misses her father, and her mother refuses to talk about him. Even in the company of her baby brother, Charles Wallace, a preternaturally self-assured child who’s even more of an outcast than she is, she feels alone.

Unable to sleep because of the raging storm outside, Meg heads downstairs to make a cup of cocoa, only to find that Charles has anticipated her trek to the kitchen and is waiting with an extra cup for her. Soon their mother emerges to join them, and a cozy scene is set, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door and the entrance of Mrs. Whatsit, a wet, bedraggled woman, strangely clad and excessively cheerful. Mrs. Whatsit upends the peace of the Murrys’ living room for a bit and then takes her leave, but before leaving, she drops a bombshell on the mother by informing her, rather matter-of-factly, “There is such a thing as a tesseract.”

Thus begins James Sie’s adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s beloved book, A Wrinkle in Time, now in its fourth go-around at Lifeline Theatre, where it made its world premiere in 1990. First published in the early 1960s, L’Engle’s classic novel married a traditional coming-of-age story with religious allegory and has been adapted into two movies (both sucked), an opera, three stage plays, and a musical. But if we want to get hipster-y, Sie and Lifeline are the OGs, adapting it before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon.

Rohan Link-Francisco, Manali Sunkara, and Sam Hook

The next day, things perk up further with the sudden appearance of Calvin, Meg’s school crush. Several years older than Meg, Calvin is everything Meg wants to be: popular, athletic, and part of a large, boisterous family. But what Meg doesn’t know is that Calvin is as isolated as she is; he’s just better at hiding it. He’s also odd in his own way, gnawed by strange sensations that tell him where he needs to be but won’t tell him why. On this day, Calvin’s gut tells him he needs to be in the forest, where he meets Meg and Charles Wallace. And a good thing, too, because Charles insists that they need to visit a creepy, decrepit house deep in the woods. This is where Mrs. Whatsit lives, along with her two companions, Mrs. Who, who speaks almost entirely in quotations, and Mrs. Which, who speaks almost entirely in deeply portentous tones. Mrs. Whatsit informs them that only the three children can rescue their father, but they need to do it right away: no time to lose.

And then, with a whoosh and a dimming of the lights, our three heroes are traveling through time and space, landing on Uriel, the planet of the centaurs, which is the first stop on their intergalactic journey.

A Wrinkle in Time was somewhat revolutionary in its genre when it was first published, featuring, as it did, a ferociously intelligent female protagonist, outspoken and gifted at math (take that, Mattel) and eschewing romantic entanglements—those would come in the subsequent books as the children aged. But what made it endure was the richness of its themes and the depth of its characters. And by that same measure, what’s made Sie’s adaptation endure is how well he’s transferred those qualities to his script.

Sam Hook, Rohan Link-Francisco, Manali Sunkara, Victoria Cruz, Amanda Link, Jordan Gleaves, Cami Stuckert

Fresh off the success of Loki at Lifeline, director Heather Currie is at the top of her game here, handling the complexities of the narrative with aplomb. In this, she is aided by Joe Griffin’s excellent sound design and some astounding costumes from Jazmin Aurora Medina—the outfits for the beast-like Ixchel, a faceless race of people with multiple arms and tentacles, are an absolute marvel. Managing to be both alarming and comforting, they shame the movie designs of the characters, at several hundredfold less the budget, I imagine.

She also has a terrific set of actors at her disposal. Along with Cami Stuckert as Mrs. Who and Justin P. Banks as Mrs. Which, Amanda Link is a delightfully dotty Mrs. Whatsit; Victoria Cruz is wonderful in all of her roles, shining especially as Mrs. Murry; and Brian Tochterman brings a touching fragility to his absentee father. What makes the show work, though, are the three principals: Sam Hook’s unusual take on Calvin—all gangly limbs and awkwardness—pays rich dividends in the final section of the play, and Manali Sunkara is a fabulous Meg: feisty, combative, cranky, insecure, and achingly vulnerable, sometimes all within the same scene. But the performance that impressed me the most was that of young Rohan Link Francisco. I don’t know the age of the actor—the character is four years old—but Mr. Francisco has an astounding amount of presence and poise and commands the stage, delivering his lines with the boundless confidence of the young and gifted. And a good thing it is, too, given the importance of Charles Wallace to the narrative. He also beautifully conveys the neurodivergence of the character, an aspect of Charles that didn’t register with me when I read the book as a teen. A performance of this caliber from an actor this young doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and director Currie deserves an equal amount of credit for the achievement.

Some stories are of their time, and some are timeless; fittingly, given its subject matter, A Wrinkle in Time falls into the latter category. By the time I read the book, I was already close to the second generation to fall in love with it. It delights me that James Sie’s script and Lifeline’s productions are following in that path. Thirty-six years after it premiered on the Lifeline stage, A Wrinkle in Time still enchants. I’ve no doubt that it will do so again another thirty-six years from now.

A Wrinkle in Time
Lifeline Theatre
6912 N. Glenwood Ave. in Chicago
Fri at 7:30; Sat at 4 & 8; Sun at 4
2 hours with intermission
ends on October 18, 2026
for tickets, visit Lifeline Theatre

for more shows, visit Theater in Chicago

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