Lynn Canal Community Players’ Summer Youth Theater Conservatory takes a musical turn this year with performances of Gary LaVigne’s “Noodle Rat Rotten Hat” July 24-25 at the Chilkat Center. Shows start 7 p.m.
The show’s script incorporates about 20 songs in a story that’s a send-up of several fairy tales including Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Hansel and Gretel, and The Three Little Pigs. Its title owes to a not-so “big, bad” wolf whose ferocity is knocked down several notches by a speech impediment.
“Noodle Rat Rotten Hat” is the wolf’s attempt to pronounce “Little Red Riding Hood.” Because he never went to school, the wolf’s language is an approximation of words and sayings. “Freeze a spoon” is his version of “See you soon,” and so on.
Production manager Bill Winkley said besides appealing to children, the humorous play is full of lessons for youngsters, including being kind, being a friend and getting over one’s shyness.
“It’s a modern take on a fairy tale. It borrows from many stories people are familiar with, and there are some beautiful lessons,” Winkley said.
Plus there’s music and action. “The kids get to sing – they’ve been getting quite a bit of singing lessons – and there’s a lot of movement,” Winkley said.
The musical is the second consecutive summer production here for Winkley and director Norman Coleman and the pair say the 20-member cast includes familiar and new faces. Actors range in age from 5-13.
“We have some repeaters (from last year’s production of “Puss-n-Boots”). We lost some kids and we have some new kids,” Winkley said. Matilda Rogers is Little Red Riding Hood, Stella Ordonez plays Goldilocks, and Brandt Alten-Huber is Jack-O, a scared crow who serves as narrator. Sister Aurora Alten-Huber is the play’s villain, a witch.
Zach Ritzinger and Selby Long play Hansel and Gretel. The cast includes eight bears and three sprites. Winkley said perhaps the most challenging role belongs to Logan Borcik, the wolf, who must master the character’s jabberwocky.
“It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be, but it was still pretty hard,” Borcik, 11, said this week about memorizing nonsense phrases. “They’re actual words, that if you figure it out right, sound like the real words.”
Borcik said the production is his fifth or sixth and he’s looking forward to the last-minute excitement that comes with bringing a production to a live audience.
Aurora Alten-Huber, 13, said she’s delighted with her character, the witch and antagonist. “I get to eat kids,” she said this week, adding that “they taste just like chicken.” Alten-Huber said she’s been practicing her cackle and maniacal laugh.
“I like being a character in a story. Getting in front of people, putting on a show and knowing you’ve done your best” is what makes performing fun, Alten-Huber said.
Twin brother Brandt Alten-Huber said Borcik’s character is probably the play’s funniest. His crow character has three scenes with the wolf, at first trying to correct his speech, then translating it and finally, in their final meeting, accepting it.
“People will like the humor (of the show) and possibly the music, but that depends on what kind of music you like,” he said. He said he’s learned a lot during the month-long camp, including articulation and projection, “mostly due to the directors.”
Production manager Winkley said he and Coleman took theater campers last week to participate in free workshops put on by the Chautauqua cast and he was encouraged to see some camp students jump on stage with performers after Friday’s main performance.
Besides conventions of the theater, Winkley said he and Coleman hope to impart to students “a knowledge and love of seeing and being in theater.”
The other part is teaching young actors to work as a team to make the show a success, he said. Ensemble work includes teaching students to support each other, not to upstage one another, to remain in character at all times, and to recognize that “there are no small parts” to a production, Winkley said.
The camp’s staff has included playmaking and voice instructor Cathy Pashigian, intern Daniela Saez, and assistant Dominic Stossel. Adult volunteers still are needed to help with stage scenery and to sew costumes. Call Winkley at 985-713-1914 to help.