"Rapunzel" is billed as appropriate for 7-year-olds and up, but it's a little heavy on the "va va voom." The average first grader might be puzzled or frightened by murder, eye gouging, head-butting, kissing, a speech on the perils of inflation and Rapunzel's laments from on high, whether, "That's not love! That's sadism," or, more subtly, "I want more loving! Come back Patrizio! Let's kiss again, and then take me away to your land where the olives grow." Directed and adapted by Emma Rice, "Rapunzel" runs at the New Victory through March 23.
A winking version of `Rapunzel' opens
NEW YORK (AP) -March 13, 2008 Fairy tales these days are rarely told without a wink, and the
Kneehigh Theatre's celebration of the imprisoned maiden and her
sky-high braid at the New Victory Theater does an especially clever
job of modernizing - and restoring - the old classic made famous by
the Brothers Grimm.
Playwright Annie Siddons explains in the program notes that she
had been so turned off by the "Barbiefication" and "sanitized
tedium" of "Rapunzel" and other fairy tales that she sought out
stories in their earliest versions, discovering a missing dash of
"va va voom" in old Italian tellings from the 17th century.
Rapunzel's wild times begin in infancy when her peasant father
abandons her in the garden of herbalist Mother Gothel (played in
drag by Charlie Barnecut). "What's this?" Mother Gothel exclaims
upon seeing the baby, "A miracle! Am I growing people now, too?"
A splendid childhood of hugs and herbs is shattered when the little
girl becomes a woman and her terrified parent banishes her to a
tower (a red swing in this version), for her own good, of course.
With nothing to do except read books and cry for her freedom,
Rapunzel becomes truly rattled when a mandolin-strumming prince,
Patrizio (Pieter Lawman), grabs a hold of the heroine's locks and
wins her heart, at least after persuading her to ignore the book
that insists "Romantic love is a myth designed to perpetuate the
economic status quo."
Family battles follow, from the covetous Mother Gothel and her
vigilant pair of scissors, to the prince's power-mad sibling, Paolo
(again, Charlie Barnecut), scheming against his "repellent milksop
of a brother." But a royal wedding is ensured, where Rapunzel
hands out seeds for the kingdom's gardens and a feast of
slaughtered pig is promised.
Nobody acts like a grown-up in this story, fitting for a set
that suggests a fairy tale nursery: a mobile of vines of rosemary
and tarragon hang from the ceiling, while characters run about on
slatted wooden platforms below. The costumes could have been
assembled from a rummage sale: aviator glasses and flight suits,
pastel shirts and pants as bright as a stack of building blocks.
Toward the back of the stage, a small combo keeps the beat with
cool jazz and folk stomps, or silvery guitar chords that ascend and
descend with the tides of Rapunzel's rising-lowering hair.
