As Stephen Sondheim proved so conclusively with Into the Woods, musicals starring fairytale characters can do big business.
The great musical maestro himself would find much to enjoy and also plenty to envy in Nancy Harris and Marc Teitler’s delightfully witty and endlessly imaginative spin on a host of familiar stories. If there’s a better family show this Christmas season, I’ll be astonished.
It’s bad news for the baddies: the Big Bad Wolf (Dean Nolan), along with Captain Hook, the Ugly Sisters and Rumpelstiltskin have been snatched out of their respective stories and thrown into jail. The time for badness, it appears, is over.
Wolf, a philosophical chap who views snacking on grandmas as simply the professional role he has to play, has a big secret: in private, he’s going out with Cinderella. But when Peter Pan (Christian Roe), newly rebranded as a lifestyle guru, and a radiantly smug Cinders (Kathy Rose O’Brien) come for a visit, the line between goodies and baddies becomes dangerously blurred.
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Director Purni Morell gives us so much to admire. Harris and Teitler create an instantly convincing world, in which the stern-sounding Council of Bedtime Stories holds sway and no one — a lovely comic through-line — has any idea what Rumpelstiltskin is actually famous for.
The songs are catchy and the performances, especially from O’Brien, lovely.
The Unicorn has a big hit on its hands. We’ll be hearing more of this ingenious treat, for sure.
Until December 24; unicorntheatre.com
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