Cinderella

There's magic afoot in Theatre Under the Stars' production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, the musical theater titans' only collaborative work for television, but it appears only in the subsidiary roles and the physical look of the show.

The principals, the eponymous girl of the ashes, Brianna Kaleen, and Christopher, her prince charming, Jason Schmidt, have taken the evening off. They hardly exist amid the spangles, the glitter, the dress transformation, the dancing mice, the flying godmother, the sit-com prat-falling stepsisters, and those glorious tunes by Rodgers. Where did they go?

Written as a project for CBS Television which had wisely put Julie Andrews under contract almost as soon as she stepped on stage in My Fair Lady (1956), the execs went looking for a suitable vehicle. Through various connections and as a rebuff to NBC, which crowed with the phenomenal success of Mary Martin's Peter Pan (1955), R&H were approached to write an original musical just for her. Waif to princess, like her Eliza Doolittle, would be the perfect reprise for this classic fairy tale. The live color telecast aired March 31, 1957, and was the number one most-watched program in TV history at that time, and for years after.

Hammerstein's book is a snappy 90 minutes in six scenes to accommodate commercial breaks, and there's not much to it for character development. It's straight-forward: the bare bones of the Perrault classic story is gagged up with hoary Borscht Belt humor with the stepsisters as low comedy acts like some '50s Milton Berle drag. But it had Andrews, whose crystalline soprano and beguiling stage presence was the show's greatest appeal. And, of course, it had the irreproachable imprimatur of the great R&H team behind it. If current rating statistics are correct, half of every television in America tuned in. An impressive feat by any measure.

In subsequent television, film, and Broadway productions, Hammerstein's script has been tinkered with or scrapped, leaving Rodgers' music as the through-line. Rodgers added his own “The Sweetest Sounds” from No Strings (1962) and the duo's “There's Music in You,” from MGM's Main Street to Broadway (1953) for the 1997 television revival with Brandy and Whitney Houston which is now used in all subsequent stagings. There are four official versions of the musical – original telecast, two “enchanted” versions, and the current Broadway one with a script from Douglas Carter Beane. TUTS uses the “enchanted” adaptation of Robert L. Freeman's teleplay from Brandi's 1997 TV special, with additions by Tom Biggs. That's a lot of magicians trying to sprinkle pixie dust to make this one-note magic carpet fly. It remains earth-bound.

Here, though, the problem lies in the leads. The casting is off. While Kaleen possesses a lilting vibrato and is pleasant to look at, her voice is small and, even when amplified, can not fill the Hobby's cavernous space. She's buried under the stage design and never quite finds her way out. She's certainly not very interested in her Prince-to-be. Their “meet cute” scene is over before it begins and gets lost in the bustle around them. There's no spark, no sparkle. Schmidt is so low-energy it would take a box of matches to light him up. His tenor is smoky and quite distinctive, but he sounds like he should be nursing a J&B in a Vegas lounge act. He's a fairy-tale Mel Tormé, crooning his yearning love song “The Loneliness of Evening” (cut from South Pacific) as if in a hip jazz club. There's no passion in him, and none for Cinderella. Maybe these two were having an off night; it happens, though not usually on opening night. It leaves an emptiness at the heart of this show which needs all the fullness it can manage.

The fire in this production is provided by a gospel-infused Soara-Joye Ross as glitzy Godmother, Courtney Markowitz in soaring voice as the Stepmother, Mark Ivy as harried royal caretaker Lionel, and the scene-stealing duo of Gemini Quintos and Sarah Sachi as Grace and Joy, the bumptious Stepsisters. Brian Pacelli's set and video designs are tour-worthy, Renée Brode's lighting is fine, Monica Josette's choreography is stingy, Colleen Grady's costumes are clever and certainly colorful, while director Eboni Bell Darcy moves everyone around in picturesque ways.

It just all doesn't quite work the way it should, although the audience whooped and hollered when Cinderella kissed the Prince. And they were wowed – as intended – when Cinderella twirled in glee and her peasant dress morphed into ball gown. For one of the oldest stage tricks in the books, it still works. Now, is there another magic trick to get this show off the ground? Not up this sleeve.

Cinderella continues through December 24 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; and 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at The Hobby Center, 800 Bagby. For more information call 713-558-8887 or visit tuts.com. $40-$139.

Peter Pan
If you want magic of a different kind, try Rec Room. Flying? Sure, easiest thing in the world. The world's oldest trick in the book. Have your actor fall into the arms of the others on stage and carry him aloft as they make “whoosing” sounds as though soaring through air. Clever and fun, meta theater at its best. No wires. Magical.

It's this kind of practical, imaginative stagecraft that lifts Peter Pan high. Naturally, there are other reasons – a lovely cast, fully committed to the task at hand; another divine setting from Stefän Azizi; subtle sound work from Robert Leslie Meek; quick-change costumes that evoke punk, rock, and pirates by Lilli Lemberger; sensitive direction from Matt Hune; and, best of all, a superlative adaptation of James M. Barrie's classic tale of the “boy who wouldn't grow up.”

The writer isn't credited, but I assume it's a combo from Rec Room's artistic director Hune and script supervisor Nicole Zimmerer who craftily pieced this together. Whoever is responsible, it's definitely ur-Barrie, using direct passages from both stage play Peter Pan (1904) and, later, book Peter and Wendy (1911), subtly glossed with darker undertones only hinted at by Barrie. Although Barrie was the most autobiographical of writers, his Victorian/Edwardian outlook prevented his deepest psychoses from getting too near the surface. But all manner of hidden desires are there in tantalizing glimpses. Today, society would probably red flag him for his overly solicitous attachment to the Llewelyn-Davies children, as some did so in his time, but his own imagination was surely fired and deeply influenced by his attachment to the boys.

Rec Room heightens these subliminal feelings but not too overtly, more like an overlay. Peter (Francisco Zurcher in a stunning tour de force performance) is older than Barrie's constantly forgetful boy, but his youthful boastfulness is still carried before him like a sword. He wants his lost mother who barred her windows upon his return, and Wendy (Emma McDonough), with her bedtime stories, is appropriate surrogate. Zurcher has an agile athleticism, no doubt from his former studies at Houston Ballet, TUTS, and HSPVA under Hune, and his feral qualities are just right for this child of the winds. He crows magnificently.

At the beginning, McDonough is a bit too strident and aggressive, somewhat too eager for that first kiss, but she softens as the play continues and wins our sympathy. The others in the cast play the children and the pirates, swiftly donning a coonskin cap, a bandanna, or a pirate's “arrgh” most convincingly. They work together beautifully and have as much fun as we do in their transformations.

Dano Colón (Nana, Smee, lost boy Curly); Greg Cote (as evil a Captain Hook if ever there was one, the lost boy Slightly, and blustery, hapless Mr. Darling); Alan Kim (memorable last season in Rec Room's Wolf Play) as John and lost boy Tootles; Wesley Whitson (memorable in just about everything) as Michael, Nibs, and Starkey; and Alli Villines as grown-up Wendy. But she's most important as onstage pianist who opens the play by uncovering the old piano in the Darling bedroom and continues to underscore the play with her and Meeks' fragrant score. And let's not forget Tinkerbell, that jealous fairy who regards Peter as her own. With a voice of electronic static, she's quite a presence as she jumps from lamp to lamp.

Everything you remember about Pan is here: sticking on the shadow with soap, the arrow attack saved by the thimble, the underground lair neatly conveyed by hidden passages in the floor, the poison in the medicine, Hook's maudlin monologue about fame, his “split me infinitives” and final toast to Eton, “Floreat Etona,” before he flings himself off the ship into the waiting crocodile below, and, effectively, Peter's plea to us to clap our hands to save Tink's life if we believe in fairies.

Rec Room's homage is both theatrically tongue-in-cheek and deeply reverential. Barrie and Pan live again. We do believe. Just like Rec Room.

Peter Pan continues through December 30 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays. Rec Room Arts, 100 Jackson. For more information, call 713-588-9403 or visit recroomarts.org. $15-$40.

Into the Woods

There's another kind of magic loose in Houston and it belongs to Stephen Sondheim and writer James Lapine via Art Factory. It's Into the Woods, Sondheim's delightfully-wicked adult take on some of our beloved fairy tales, all mashed together. Act I could be called Dreams Come True; Act II, The Consequences When They Do. Or, Don't wish for what you want, you may get it.

We meet Cinderella, her horrible step family, her prince; Little Red Ridinghood, her granny, and wolf; Rapunzel and her dashing prince; Jack and his mother of beanstalk fame; a new couple, the Baker and his Wife; and of course a wicked witch who sets all this in motion with a long-ago curse. There's an omniscient Narrator to lead us on like any good storyteller. These familiar characters weave in and out as everyone finds themselves lost in the woods – that primordial place where people are changed forever, where inhibitions are forgotten, new paths taken, bad things happen, and lessons are learned.

Woods is Sondheim's most accessible score and, probably, his most popular. Expressive and dryly witty, his melodies skim along breathlessly – with lyrics to match – then suddenly pause for a haunting song that's so pure in feeling your heart breaks a little. The witch's “Children Will Listen” and Cinderella and the Baker's “No One is Alone” are cafe standards since the musical's premiere in 1987. The show's as fresh and tantalizing as ever in this heartfelt production.

The other swirling theme is what you've done to realize your dreams. What compromises, deceits, cooperation, and/or blame is your excuse? Did you cheat a dorky little boy into trading his cow for a handful of beans so you could get one of your required items to lift the curse? Did those beans, cursed long ago by the witch's mother, grow into a gigantic beanstalk that pierced the giant's lair? Seeking adventure, and later goaded by Red Ridinghood into proving his bravery, didn't Jack climb the stalk, befriend the giant's wife, then steal the gold? Didn't Cinderella's Prince, bored at the castle, find the Baker's Wife lost in the forest and have a “Moment in the Woods.” “I was brought up to be charming, not sincere,” he tells the Wife cavalierly as he says goodbye after their tryst. Didn't the Witch lock up daughter Rapunzel to keep her safe from the world, not realizing how much it would warp her?

Safe from the world? You can't be safe from the world, sing Sondheim and Lapine with a knowing wink from a gimlet eye. Everybody finds himself or herself in these subconscious woods. “I Know Things Now,” sings the wiser Ridinghood after her seduction by the wolf. As in classic Grimm tales, eyes are pecked out, wolves are skinned, mothers die, fathers are useless, and curses are borne. Yet “No One Is Alone” is the community mantra. We can get through this calamity together – the giantess rampaging through the countryside – if we work together. There are not always happy endings, but we must make the best of what we're responsible for and those dreadful things that happen that we're not responsible for. Come what may, we can choose the ending of our own story. That message reverberates throughout.

Under the nimble and refined direction by Colton Berry and Luke Hamilton (who also choreographs), Art Factory gives Sondheim a misty, dank, side-lit forest in which to ramble and find oneself. The production has no need for extraneous set pieces, that wondrous forest is all you need. It's timeless. (Berry, a renaissance man of the theater, also designed the set, lighting, costumes and hair, and the puppet baby.)

The cast is good down the line, and some quite exceptional – Berry's Baker and Katy McCants' Baker's Wife are especially vivid; Sarah Beth Sims' Cinderella, prat falls and all, is expressive; Pari Zangara's Little Red Ridinghood almost steals the show with her smarty-pants attitude; Elizabeth Chrisman Shurtz' Witch, beautifully sung, is totally wicked until she's all soft and motherly; Ethan Spell's Jack is touchingly alive, as is Laura Hastings Renfroe's harried Jack's Mother; Luke Hamilton's Cinderella's Prince is royally fey, and his Wolf is royally dangerous and seductive. They are all note-worthy.

What is Sondheim's distinct style and musical tone without the mastery of Jonathan Tunick's sublime orchestrations? That would be like Duke Ellington without Billy Strayhorn. Tunick invented the Sondheim sound – that hard staccato, those off-kilter little phrases, that driving beat – there would be no Sondheim as we know him without Tunick. Art Factory uses a prerecorded score (“a performance accompaniment recording”) apparently from Music Theater International that licenses these things. It is a godsend. However, it is played overbearingly loud and ofttimes drowns out even the miked singers. We want to hear those deft and pinprick lyrics distinctly. They are difficult enough to sing, but they must always be heard in hi-def clarity.

Into the Woods is a classic of American musical theater. It's a classic of anybody's musical theater. Art Factory does itself proud with this.

Into the Woods. continues through December 17 at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 5 p.m, Sunday. Art Factory, 1125 Providence. For more information, call 832-210-5200 or visit artfactoryhouston.com. $30.