RUDYARD KIPLING’S TALES PUT AN END TO THE TEARS

“Is she going to be all right?”

Pablo Marz, house manager of Louis B. Mayer Performance Space at the Los Angeles Children’s Museum, paused apprehensively to address the mother of a loudly tearful infant, in the middle of his brief pre-performance cautionary speech that admonished: No sudden onstage audience ambulations, and quiet, please.

“I think she’ll be fine once she’s entertained,” was the serene reply.

It says much for the new resident Museum Theatre Company that not another tear was shed during its Saturday presentation of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories.”

“Once upon a time, O Best Beloved. . . .”

Kipling’s gently whimsical tales, “How the Camel Got His Hump,” “The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo” and “The Elephant’s Child,” set back when the “world was so new and all,” for the most part fared quite nicely under the direction of Candace Barrett.

After a flat opening--intonations by the Eldest Magician (Mary Worthington) and jump-suited actors in slow motion depicting the creation of the earth and the sea--came true entertainment, thanks to a faithfulness to Kipling’s language and the comic energy of three actors in particular.

The 13-member ensemble is made up of museum floor staff and volunteers, not all of whom have performing arts backgrounds, though most are involved in the arts in some way. Several are artists with local exhibits, others are dancers and musicians. Though all did a creditable job Saturday, it’s no surprise that two actors who lent so much to the performance have professional backgrounds.

A treat to watch were Tom Dugan as the “most ‘scrutiatingly idle” camel, the lofty god Nquong and the erudite Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock Snake--and Steve Jehring in his turns as the sly Crocodile and “Dingo--Yellow-Dog Dingo--always hungry, grinning like a coal-scuttle.”

A third stand-out, a dancer with no previous acting experience, came close to stealing the show. Alvaro Asturias, round-eyed and kinetic, was in his element, garnering laughs for his comic body language as well as his speech. He was a wildly gesticulating Djinn, “making a magic” to bring the lazy Camel into line (and unflustered when Dugan had trouble getting into his camel’s hump behind the screen of Asturias’ cloak) and hilarious as Old Man Kangaroo, whose “pride was inordinate.”

Pauses between stories were too long, but a first-rate touch was the smoothly shifting narration.

Judging by its first production, there’s cause to look forward to further efforts from the Children’s Museum Theatre Company.