Melissa Gilbert returns to 'Little House'

At first, when Gilbert learned there was to be a musical version of “Little House,” she thought producers were crazy. “The first thing I said when my manager called me was, ‘You’re kidding me,’ ” she said. “He finally shut me up and said, ‘Will you just read it and listen to the music?’ ” The music, she said, was extraordinarily moving and soon she found herself at a reading with the late Patrick Swayze in the role of Pa Ingalls.

“It is rather nerve-racking being in a tiny rehearsal hall singing my guts out in front of people who are going to determine your fate,” Gilbert said. But, “if something scares me at all ... I need to conquer it.”

The show went through a few overhauls as Gilbert prepped for the role. She reread the last four books of the series and consulted the books written about Caroline Ingalls and her childhood. “There is a lot of Laura in Ma. At some point in our lives, we are spunky and full of wonder. I think Caroline as I am playing her has that as well, but she is also a mother, so I get to bring my experience as a mother to the role,” said Gilbert, whose 14-year-old son is also part of the cast.

Despite the hard work she has put into preparing, Gilbert said she lives in fear of Karen Grassle, who played Ma on the television series, coming to see a show. “I have done the show for everyone else in the cast except her and [the deceased] Michael Landon [who played Pa],” Gilbert said.

Being once again attached to the series hasn’t been much of a concern, she said, since no one in the industry ever quite let her out of that particular box. Gilbert, who has served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, recalls walking into high-level meetings with everyone expecting her to be wearing pigtails and gingham dresses. “The blessing is I am a working actor and I have been since I was 9 years old,” she said.

And besides, “Little House” was always more profound and meaningful than it ever got credit for being. “[People] forget some of the episodes that were very cutting edge in the early ’70s,” she said. Stories like the war vet who comes home addicted to morphine and commits suicide, or the young girl who was raped and murdered, or the alcoholic father whom Pa rehabilitated and sent back to his family, covered some pretty heavy ground. “Not a lot of people were dealing with those subjects,” Gilbert said. “It was told in a very palatable way, but it was very edgy.”

Onstage, where the actors begin with an empty set, building everything as the musical unfolds just as they would have on the prairie, a certain sense of values is communicated to the audience, Gilbert said. Anyone looking for another “Rent,” the Jonathan Larson musical based on Puccini’s “La Bohème,” should look elsewhere, she said. The strength of “Little House” — a show that debuted during what was then the worst recession of modern times — was its sense of hope, tolerance and respect for the planet, Gilbert said.

“It reminds people of what we as humans and Americans are capable of if we do it together,” she said. “We tend to live in bubbles. ... There is very little real sense of community anymore. This show reminds people of that.”

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Theater preview

“Little House on the Prairie: The Musical”

8 p.m. today-Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 1:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday. $39.95-$82.65.

Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 1-800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com .