In the guise of dolls, the past unfolds

“CRA-A-ACK!” The explosive sound of a bullwhip sets hearts pounding. A sneering slave owner stalks off as a pool of light reveals a young slave girl named Addy and her frantic mother, preparing to flee to the North.

Scene shift: Here’s Addy again, newly free and jubilant, encountering Northern white girls. Slowly, silently, they turn their backs on Addy, who realizes that the end of slavery doesn’t mean the end of racism.

Stage lights dim. A costume change. The scenic backdrop takes on a new hue. Tempo change in the live music.

The rapt audience of mostly little girls and women is gathered in this 133-seat theater for a song-and-dance tribute to “the spirit of American girlhood yesterday and today.”

But unlike most youth theater productions, this revue is taking place in a state-of-the-art theater tucked in a retail store at the Grove shopping center in Los Angeles.

Stage versions of popular children’s franchises have long been a marketing tool, one raised to delirious heights by Disney’s Broadway blockbusters. Barbie does it, the Blues Clues pup does it, even Big Bird and Elmo do it. But American Girl Place, the berry-hued mecca of wholesomeness and high-end merchandise so perilous to parental pocketbooks, has taken it to a shrewd, high-concept level.

In this three-story, “experiential” emporium -- where a doll “starter kit” runs $150 and the teeny doll clothes hangers are a must-have at $10 a batch -- children ages 6 to 12 can now catch a professionally staged American Girl-themed musical. Price of admission: $30.

Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford, the creative team behind the production, were drawn to the project through Cryer’s granddaughter, a reader of the American Girl books.

“They are all about little girls who have their foibles and problems but are always able to find a solution and come through, little morality tales that offer role models for girls. And the parents are helpful, wise people who help guide the kids through,” Cryer says.

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History plays out

WRITING about pre-adolescent girls as smart, strong and compassionate provided a satisfying arc, says Cryer, who with Ford three decades ago wrote about women finding their voices in the birth of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s stage hit “I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road.”

In the revue, child actors play contemporary 9-year-olds acting out the stories of American Girl dolls, including Kaya, a Nez Perce of the 1764 Northwest; Revolutionary War-era Felicity; Josefina of 1824 colonial New Mexico; and pioneer Kirsten, circa 1854.

Vignettes, set within each doll’s historical context, are staged with ambient lighting, sets, live music and many costume changes (doll and child sizes available for purchase).

American Girl, founded by Pleasant T. Rowland, began selling books, dolls and other merchandise as a premium catalog-only business in 1985. It launched its first retail store in Chicago in 1998 and became a fast-growing Mattel franchise the same year. A New York store opened in 2003.

Overseeing the musicals in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago is Scott Davidson, founding artistic director of the Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre and the now-defunct Serendipity Theatre Company in Los Angeles.

“We try and avoid a stagy quality,” he says. “We look for girls who reflect our audience. We want simple, honest performances.”

Like Cryer, Davidson’s involvement was spurred by personal experience -- his daughter, now 19, grew up with American Girl. “I know the thing that spoke to her most clearly were the stories, the books,” he says. “It’s what she remembers today.”

Since Davidson joined the company in 2000, Cryer and Ford have revised their original revue and written a second show, “Circle of Friends,” which moved recently from Chicago to New York and will eventually come to L.A. The stores have added a short show for children 3 and older, “Bitty Bear’s Matinee,” written by Davidson’s wife, Jody Davidson, education director of Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre, with music by Arnie Roth, violinist, conductor and Manheim Steamroller member.

A holiday show that has played seven years in Chicago and three in New York will reach L.A. in fall 2007.

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Hitting the road

CRYER, Ford and Valerie Tripp, author of many of the original American Girl books, had hoped to tour the revue independently of the stores, but negotiations with the company fell through, Cryer says.

“The concept of a tour surfaced at the same time we were planning to open American Girl Place New York as well as produce our first television movie, ‘Samantha: An American Girl Holiday,’ ” Davidson explains.

Addy, however, will have an independent incarnation, when “Addy: An American Girl Story,” adapted for stage by noted playwright Cheryl West, premieres in April at the Seattle Children’s Theatre.

How this message plays against the consumer abundance just outside the theater doors may leave cynical adults pondering, Cryer acknowledges.

“All we could do in bringing those characters to the stage was to try to write a show with integrity,” she says. “Yes, it’s plunked down in the middle of a commercial establishment. But you hope that people who come to buy all that stuff will come to the show and that their little girls will be affected by what they see there.”

Meanwhile, for parents likely to avoid the revue in L.A. for fear they won’t get out of the store without dropping a bundle, Wade Opland, American Girl’s vice president of retail, carefully points out the affordability of the store’s $6.95 paperback books. (Although to get to the second-floor theater, patrons must pass more expensive goodies.)

“We want them to learn about strong girls from the past and how that carries into the future,” Opland says. “That’s our bedrock. That’s the foundation of who we are.”