In its most ambitious production to date, the Chesapeake Arts Center has mounted the world premiere of a fairy tale musical called Rumpelstiltskin's Daughter. It's a show that aspires to be a sort of a stylistic cross between Disney's Beauty and the Beast and Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods.
Maryland-based librettist/director Robert Neal Marshall and New York songwriter Tim Battle have based the musical on Diane Stanley's children's book of the same name, fleshing the tale out with new characters and subplots, in addition to songs and dances.
It's a tall order, and with more polish it might have a life on the professional touring children's show circuit. At last Sunday's matinee, however, the sound system obscured many of the lyrics, the group numbers seemed unnecessarily busy, and the scene changes and pacing were sluggish, especially in the second act.
Stanley's story focuses on a young woman named Hope, daughter of the little man with a gift for spinning straw into gold. The same greedy king who imprisoned her mother now imprisons her. But instead of turning to Rumpelstiltskin for help, Hope concocts a plan to trick the king into improving the lot of his starving, impoverished subjects.
The story has a feminist strain and a strong social conscience. The musical attempts to heighten these themes by contrasting Hope's goodness with two new evil characters - the king's stepmother and stepbrother. There's also a narrator whose wry sensibility calls to mind the same character in Into the Woods.
Jessica Liegh Campbell is a sweet, smart Hope, expanding the qualities displayed by Dianna Collins as her plucky mother. Terry J. Long, Ellana Barksdale and Edward Zarkowski provide most of the show's broad humor in the roles of the royal family. But Jim Raistrick is both too tall and too earthbound to be a magical Rumpelstiltskin. Oddly enough, two of the best voices belong to minor players, Jason Kimmel and Eleanor Wyche, who briefly get to shine in the song "I Wonder Who She Is," a number that perks things up considerably.
In the second act, the action becomes highly episodic, with too much activity crowded in and a final scene that feels like a curtain call, instead of the resolution of the drama.
Still, Rumpelstiltskin's Daughter boasts some winning characters, an uplifting message and a few catchy tunes. Admirable as these elements may be, however, there's a ways to go before this fairy tale musical achieves the ranks of happily-ever-after.
Show times at the Chesapeake Arts Center, 194 Hammonds Lane, Brooklyn Park, are 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Nov. 21, with matinees at 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through Nov. 24. Tickets are $16 and $18. Call 410-636-6597 or visit www.rumpelstiltskins daughter.com.
'Rose' reading
A staged reading of Martin Sherman's one-woman play Rose will be Everyman Theatre's contribution to the city's Vivat! St. Petersburg festival in February. The play, which will star Everyman resident company member Vivienne Shub, focuses on a Russian-Jewish immigrant's journey, which begins in a small Russian village, includes an account of the voyage of the ship Exodus and concludes in Miami Beach.
Rose was originally announced as part of the 2001-2002 season at Everyman but was delayed while Shub underwent treatment for a slipped cervical disc.
Everyman artistic director Vincent Lancisi says the reading, which will be presented when the theater is usually dark, "may be a precursor to starting an off-night series of staged readings. We're looking to see how well this does."
Rose will be performed at Everyman, 1727 N. Charles St., at 7:30 p.m. Sundays-Tuesdays and 2:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Feb. 9-25. Tickets are $15. For more information, call 410-752-2208.
'BOOM!' at Mechanic
The touring production of tick, tick ... BOOM! coming to the Mechanic Theatre in March will star Christian Campbell, whose credits include the off-Broadway production of Reefer Madness; the movie Trick and the Fox TV series The $treet. Campbell will play the young composer, Jonathan, in this autobiographical musical by Jonathan Larson, the late creator of Rent.
Completing the three-person cast will be Wilson Cruz (best known as Ricky in the ABC series My So-Called Life) as Jonathan's best friend, and Nicole Ruth Snelson (featured in the recent Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun) as Jonathan's girlfriend.
tick, tick ... BOOM! will run March 4-9 at the Mechanic, 25 Hopkins Plaza. Tickets are $12.50-$55. For more information, call 410-481-SEAT.
Solo piece comes home
After engagements at fringe festivals from coast to coast, Baltimorean Brandon Welch brings his latest solo performance piece, George Bush's Nuts (or How I Learned to Enjoy Real Time War Footage on LSD), home on Nov. 22 and 23, when it will be presented at 7:30 p.m. in the Studio Theatre in Towson University's Center for the Arts, Osler and Cross Campus drives.
Welch, who has a master's degree from Towson's graduate theater program, says the new piece features his stock Baltimore character, Donny, last seen in Welch's previous piece, Welcome to Baltimore, Hon, as well as such new creations as a gay anti-war activist and a character called "The White Devil," whom he describes as "America's newest superhero - a cartoon character except all the stuff coming out of his mouth is based on real stuff Bush, Dick Cheney, Dick Armey or Donald Rumsfeld have said."
Tickets to George Bush's Nuts are $8. For more information call 410-704-ARTS.