Metro Pulse/Backstage/Hansel and Gretel

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What:
Hansel and Gretel

When:
Saturday, Sept. 22 and Saturday, Sept. 29 at 1 and 3 p.m.

Where:
Black Box Theatre

Cost:
$5. Call 523-0900 for more information.

Actors Co-op mines the imagination for this kid's show

by Paige M. Travis

It would be an exaggeration to say that kids have imaginations and adults don't. Or that technology bombards us with so many images that our imaginations are numb or obsolete. I will suggest, however, that we don't exercise them enough. Being allowed and encouraged to use our imaginations—to see things that aren't there, to believe the unbelievable, to have faith in the simple tenets of life—is one of the best things about being a kid. About being alive, period. That's why the Actors Co-op Whippersnapper series' production of Hansel and Gretel is so delightful for adults—it taps into our inner fantasy worlds, greases up those rusty gears and pumps life into the cobwebby corners of the mind. Oh, and kids will like it because it's a lot of fun.

Personally, when I think of the Brothers Grimm tale of a brother and sister who wander away from their home in the woods and stumble upon a house made of gingerbread, for some reason I think of Hummel figurines and fall instantly into a light coma. But this tale isn't your usual breadcrumb variety (nor is it the traditional version in which the woodcutter and his wife abandon their children in the woods because they can't afford to feed them—yikes). Moses Goldberg, producing director of Stage One, the Louisville (Ky.) Children's Theatre, has adapted the story as a comedic play-within-a-play performed by a group of Russian actors.

Staggia (Lauren Houston), the matriarch of the troupe, is the ultimate eye-rolling, gesticulating drama queen. Bulbov (Brian Bonner) is the prankster who likes to undermine her. Sabrina (Amy Hembree) keeps the two from physically harming each other, while the two younger players Bucol (Sean Riblett) and Trickle (Amandalynn Thomas) wait to be assigned their roles, which, after the cast finally agrees on a play to perform, turn out to be Hansel and Gretel.

Even if this intro is too difficult for young kids to fully understand, they still laugh at all the funny parts, of which there are plenty. Houston (who plays the witch) and Bonner (as the woodcutter father) are hammy enough to get laughs with their facial expressions and subtle enough to keep from being dumb and dumber. Bonner lives up to his hilarious turn in this summer's Measure for Measure. Houston's witch has a brassy bravado that matches her shiny gypsy outfit. She and Thomas, both Actors Co-op Apprentice Company members and students at Bearden High, are seriously talented and a joy to watch.

Riblett (in his Co-op debut) and Thomas are the archetypal brother and sister (at least the kind I'm familiar with). One minute they're shoving, the next they're using each other as pillows to sleep on the forest floor. They look to each other for guidance and then bicker about the details. Their manner is so natural, they must be used to dealing with siblings at home.

Hembree expresses the plight of the fairy tale mom well. There's no food in the house, her kids are goofing off instead of helping, and she's depending on her (probably lazy or drunk) woodcutter husband to bring back their next meal. Hembree plays the mother as harried but caring—and, boy, is she sorry when she realizes she's sent her children into the witch-haunted woods!

Continuing the Black Box Theatre's low-tech tradition of spare sets, director and sound designer Sara Pat Schwabe creates a lot out of very little. The lights and a few gauzy ceiling-to-floor sashes form the outline of a looming and dangerous forest and the witch's house of delectable sweets. The players work with Goldberg's text and a few props to make us imagine the children's desperate hunger, their dread at being lost and their fear of the witch. Two mimes (Grace Roman and Cacey Lewis) enact the invisible threats of the forest and later become the wide-open jaws of the witch's oven. They incorporate modern dance movements to evoke the lives of invisible and inanimate things; they act as physical and figurative reminders of what is unseen.

Goldberg's Hansel and Gretel is designed to get viewers (namely the littlest ones) to participate in the play's action. Audience members helped Hansel and Gretel by waving their arms to create berry bushes and singing a song to break the witch's spell. At the show I attended, we all joined in with little hesitation. The play doesn't babytalk the audience, and while the cast makes big gestures and cute faces, the show never comes off like Barney or some other insipid program. For an adult at a kid's show, that's a relief.

Hansel and Gretel is particularly relieving and refreshing after these past days of bad news and worse images. The play is like play itself, enjoyable, life-affirming and full of imagination—something we rarely get enough of. As Hansel and Gretel use their imaginations to ease their hunger pangs and escape from the witch, we can use ours to envision and bring to life a better future.