In the end the troll is proven wrong.

A Thousand Oaks theater group that performs for children took its show of fantasy and morals on the road over the weekend and ran into a tough audience in the Louis B. Mayer Performance Space at the Childrens’ Museum in downtown Los Angeles.

Actors For Children, a troupe assembled by casting agent and community arts worker Naomi Monroe, is now performing “Tales of Hans Christian Andersen,” adapted by Carolyn Lane.

The play consists of four stories--”The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” “The Swineherd,” “The Ugly Duckling” and “The Little Mermaid.” They are all tales of fantasy infused with lightly veiled messages about the virtues of love, honesty and self-denial.

Monroe’s company has been doing “The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen” at schools and libraries in Ventura and the Conejo Valley. It will conclude a special two-weekend run at the Childrens’ Museum on Saturday and Sunday with performances at noon and 2 p.m.

For Saturday’s noon showing last week, about 30 children, most accompanied by their parents, denied themselves the seductive pleasures of the giant pillow room, the kids’ TV news studio and the face-painting table to find out what old Hans Christian had to say.

As they waited in line outside, Hans Christian Andersen the character paced the theater doing light calisthenics and making noises with his lips to warm them up. In real life he was Scott Lee, a Burbank car salesman who recently moved to Los Angeles from Peoria and hopes to move into a career in acting.

“Why do I suddenly feel like Roy Scheider in ‘All that Jazz?’ ” he asked himself at one point.

Stage manager Tom Duggan, a tall young man in a red “Childrens’ Museum” sweat shirt, opened the door. The audience rushed in noisily.

Duggan went over the house rules.

“Is it the job of the audience to talk during the performance? Is it the job of the audience to get up and walk around during the performance?” They all said no.

Hans Christian’s opening soliloquy took a less literal direction.

“On my last birthday I was 173 years old,” he said. “Yes, really! I don’t look it, do I? Well, that’s because people who make up stories for children never grow old . . . and they never really die, either, because their spirits live on forever in their stories.”

The first story was about a tin soldier, a paper dancing doll and a troll. The soldier and the dancing doll fall in love. The troll, disguised as a jack-in-the-box and speaking with a Bronx accent, blows the soldier out the window so he can have the dancing doll for himself.

But the soldier returns, announcing: “The power of true love is stronger than any magic you can make.” Then the troll blows them both into the wood stove, sneering, “Oh, no it’s not.” In the end the troll is proven wrong.

Hans Christian, appearing from the wings, showed the children a tin heart and a spangle from the dancing doll’s hair. He said they came out of the ashes at the bottom of the stove.

The story of the swineherd was a variation of the prince-in-disguise theme. The swineherd sends a rose and a nightingale to a silly princess who is interested only in the toys sent by her many suitors. She spurns the living gifts as too dull.

The childish princess, played by Francine Markow, had some sly lines, like, “Oh, Father, are there no clever princes anywhere?” and “I don’t want a prince half as much as I want something to do.”

Later the princess agrees to kiss the smelly swineherd 10 times to get his magic pot that will show her what everyone in the kingdom is eating.

“At last we’ll know what the poor peasants eat,” she says, carrying the pot to the kitchen.

The children didn’t laugh at them, but some of the adults did.

The story also had an adult kind of ending. The king finds the princess consorting with a swineherd and banishes her. The swineherd then shows up in his true cloth as a prince and the disgraced princess swoons at his feet.

But he rejects her with the words, “An honest prince must marry an honest princess. . . . Farewell, princess.”

The kids sat through the show in silence.

A few of the younger ones, escorted by their parents, walked out.

Between shows, the actors fussed over that. Usually, they said, kids take the side of the prince and let everyone know it.

The actors wondered whether the prohibition against talking had restrained the audience or whether the lure of the giant pillow room was just too strong.

The audience for the second show acted much the same, except for one small girl who sat in the front. She couldn’t help engaging Hans Christian in a literary discussion of “The Ugly Duckling.” Markow, in a costume consisting of a white leotard and white flaps on her arms, played a giddy, awkward duckling, taking lots of pratfalls for the kids.

Afterwards, Hans Christian took a moment to make sure the message was clear.

“You see,” he said. “The poor fellow wasn’t ugly after all, just different.”

“I know why,” the little girl said. “A duck stole an egg from a swan.”

“That’s right,” Hans Christian said, a bit surprised.

“I know because I have the book,” she added.

And she probably knew what the peasants eat.