Carnival of the Animals

But oh! what a fabulous night he had had,
When his world was turned into a zoo!

After wandering off from a school field trip, a young boy falls asleep in the Natural History Museum. There he sees his classmates, teachers, and family transformed into a menagerie of animals, from wild hyenas to stately peacocks.

John Lithgow's exhilarating word play, inspired by Camille Saint-Saëns's 1886 composition, provides a narrative arc to the piece for the first time. Lithgow created the text for t...