A Cinderella who dreams of being a high-flying circus performer and eventually wins the heart of a clown prince. A musical telling of Rudyard Kipling’s ecologically prescient “The Jungle Book.” And a new dance-infused adaptation of “The Ugly Duckling,” which lets its quack-y characters dip in and out of an actual lake. These are three of the most promising children’s theater offerings for summer. From the south side to the north, these shows make wonderful diversions from the hot weather ennui that can sink the spirits of us all.
“The Ugly Duckling,” Serenbe Playhouse
Last year, Serenbe Playhouse artistic director Brian Clowdus was so troubled by the sad stories of bullying and suicides that he decided to do a children’s theater piece that would speak to the issue. One idea that began to bob around in his mind was “The Ugly Duckling,” Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the little aquatic bird who is ostracized for not fitting in.
Around the same time, choreographer Joanna Brooks proposed bringing a dance project to Serenbe, the bucolic community in Chattahoochee Hills. During a memorable walk in the woods, the two passed a lake and knew they had found the perfect site for “The Ugly Duckling.”
The resulting collaboration, opening July 2 on a stage built out into the lake, will allow actors to swim and frolic in and out of water — just like their ducky counterparts. Clowdus directs. Brooks (of Atlanta’s Brooks & Co. Dance) will choreograph. And playwright Rachel Teagle is penning a new adaptation of the classic that will include pop culture references to Brangelina and Neil Patrick Harris, plus characters based on Paris Hilton (a chicken) and Nicole Richie (a cat). You can see where this is going: The snarky fashionistas will sport “Meow-lo Blahnik” footwear and terrorize the Ugly Duckling (played by Andrew Crigler).
“It’s going to be very fun,” says Clowdus, who founded Serenbe Playhouse last summer and recently received his MFA in theater from the University of South Carolina. “But hopefully, people will leave questioning what is ugly and what makes us ugly and … ultimately what it means to make us feel accepted.”
July 2-Aug. 8. (2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Also 2 p.m. July 15, 22 and 29.) $10-$15. Serenbe Playhouse, 9110 Selbourne Lane, Suite 210, Chattahoochee Hills. 770-463-1110, serenbeplayhouse.com
“The Jungle Book,” Georgia Shakespeare
Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” is more than 100 years old, but its message of respect for the environment feels especially timely. (It was the inaugural show of Serenbe Playhouse last year.) Now Georgia Shakespeare is staging a new musical version of the Kipling classic.
The family show will use many of the same young performers who who appeared in “Shrew: The Musical,” the kicky song-and-dance telling of "The Taming of the Shrew" that the Shakespeare theater produced last year.
“The main theme, that there is a balance between man and nature, is right out of Kipling,” says director Allen O’Reilly. “That balance —or ‘Jungle Law,’ as we say in ‘Jungle Book’ — is very delicate, and when it is broken, there are severe consequences.”
The music “has a distinctive Indian feel,” O’Reilly says. The score calls for sitars and tabla, and “the cast has had to learn numerous Hindi words and phrases,” the director says. The design of the show is strongly inspired by Julie Taymor’s Disney musical “The Lion King” (think: talking bird puppet). And though the material is well known across generations, “it doesn't hurt that there was a recent re-release of the Disney film version,” O’Reilly jokes.
Commissioned by Orlando Shakespeare, “The Jungle Book” is by Daniel Levy (music) and April-Dawn Gladu (book and lyrics).
July 5-July 23. (10 a.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2 p.m. Saturdays.) $13. Georgia Shakespeare, Oglethorpe University campus, 4484 Peachtree Road N.E., Atlanta. 404-504-1473, gashakespeare.org
“Cinderella della Circus,” Center for Puppetry Arts
A few years back, Center for Puppetry Arts artistic director Jon Ludwig created a couple of shows employing delicate puppetry design to great comedic effect. “Avanti, Da Vinci!” (2004) imagined the Renaissance painter as a cartoon-style super-hero, flying around on his marvelous inventions. “Cinderella della Circus” (2008) suggested the fairy-tale heroine as a trapeze virtuoso whose evil ringmaster stepmother won’t allow her to perform.
In "Cinderella," which the center has revived for the summer, Ludwig and puppet designer Jason von Hinezmeyer riff on P.T. Barnum, commedia del arte and high fashion—dreaming up a menagerie of delightful marionettes to populate the circus: Cornelia the Zebracorn; Oliver the blushing Elephant; and a sweetly gentle Pierrot in billowing white smock and pantaloons.
Before Cinderella is transformed by love, she has to putz around in a pair of earth-bound clod-hoppers; but in the end, she gets her prince and a pair of “silver slippers” worthy of French shoe-stopper Christian Louboutin. These inspired touches are the handiwork of Ludwig and Hinezmeyer, and they are what make their shows such a pleasure for ladies, gentlemen and children of all ages.
Through July 17. (10 a.m. and 12 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays. 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m., Saturdays.1 p.m and 3 p.m. Sundays.) $9.25-$16.50. Center for Puppetry Arts, 1404 Spring St. N.W., Atlanta. 404-873-3391; puppet.org
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