So, is he going to kiss her, or what?
So tantalizing is the suspense preceding Seattle Children's Theatre's version of "Sleeping Beauty"'s famous smooch that kids in the audience are loudly counting down to the last possible moment that the spellbound princess can be awakened with a peck.
A smart, occasionally powerful production with a Pre-Raphaelite gloss and sets that literally seem to emerge from a dream, SCT's "Sleeping Beauty" is largely faithful to the Brothers Grimm account of the old story. But it has been judiciously tweaked - by the prolific Welsh playwright Charles Way - for heightened conflict and laughs.
Way's most inspired invention is a direct link between Briar Rose, the titular princess, and the witch who curses the girl with death when she reaches the age of 16. (It was 15 in the Grimms' story.) The tale begins when a devoted but childless King and Queen are overheard in their sorrow by Branwen, a compassionate witch who decides to relieve their pain by leading them, magically, to the infant Briar Rose, abandoned in the woods by a poor family.
Branwen's equally powerful but darker sister, Modron, has simultaneously determined she will take the baby as her own. Angered by Branwen's interference and further outraged that she was excluded from Briar Rose's christening ceremony, Modron puts the death curse on the child. Branwen modifies it - there's only so much she can do to lessen her sister's destructiveness - to a century-long sleep. If a hero doesn't step forward to release her from hibernation in that time, Briar Rose will be a goner.
Way's other bold stroke is introducing Briar Rose's eventual rescuer as a childhood friend. Prince Owain, a hapless, mopey boy from another kingdom, dismissed by his royal father as thoroughly "useless," spends summers with the lively, lonely girl, oblivious to her growing romantic interest in him.
When Modron appears in Briar Rose's 16th year to enforce the curse, Owain is far from ready to defend her with courage and conviction. Instead, he spends the next 100 years - which passes for him in great chunks of time lost in one or another magical realm - on a journey to find his way back to Briar Rose. (Her castle, more or less, has disappeared.)
Accompanying Owain is a new character in this old fable: Gryff, a half-man, half-dragon who generally provides some comic relief but also resembles, once the focus shifts to Owain's adventures, the Sam Gamgee role in "Lord of the Rings."
I must admit that once Briar Rose (and everyone around her, as in the Grimms' version) succumbed to sleep, I feared the play was about to be padded with perfunctory action scenes. Had the playwright painted himself into a corner by bringing Owain into the story too soon? The lad certainly has a lot - I mean, a lot - of time on his hands before the kiss. The idea of watching him and Gryff get in and out of trouble for a century had mixed appeal.
But Way takes a mythic approach to this narrative bridge. Owain encounters a pair of chattering fairies who threaten to keep him forever with a kiss, and later meets up with the Spider King, who could help Owain or have him for lunch. The production design in these scenes is spectacular.
The Spider King is an enormous, glowing puppet partially inhabited by actor Kevin C. Loomis (who also warmly plays the King and is a familiar face from "Frasier" and "The X-Files"), on a set that slowly rolls in from backstage, like a nightmare you can't escape. The fairy scene, by contrast, is hugely funny, with cheeky choreography and impish performances by Bobbi Kotula and Khanh Doan, who also play the Queen and Briar Rose, respectively.
Allen Galli (Gryff), M.J. Sieber (Owain), Julie Briskman (Branwen) and Anne Allgood (Modron) round out a busy cast that almost seems to have another dozen actors involved. Director Rita Giomi, an SCT favorite ("The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle," "The Shape of a Girl"), proves once again an imaginative and insightful storyteller. Her production team has provided spectacular sets and costumes evoking a certain 19th-century ideal about the pre-industrialized world.
Of course, none of this would matter very much if "Sleeping Beauty" didn't still enchant on some basic level, or move us with its psychological subtext about the ways death stalks the innocent, how easily the bloom of youth and beauty can be snatched away, and how important it is for the young to grow up, to find one another and become real. As in every other respect that SCT's "Sleeping Beauty" succeeds, it does honor to those ideas, too.[[In-content Ad]]
