STAGE REVIEW : Children’s Theatre Offers Discount-Store ‘Sleeping Beauty’

The American Children’s Theatre promises professional theater for kids, but it’s having a problem with quality.

At the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center, the company’s Christmas show, “Carol of the Angel,” was a skimpy play with a satisfactory cast of actors who could sing. Its current musical offering, “Sleeping Beauty,” is a good show with an inexperienced cast of limited singing ability.

Minimal sets are not unusual in children’s theater, but care must be taken to avoid tackiness. In the center’s small, Spartan auditorium, the stage is not used. Instead, the shows are performed on the bare floor surrounded on three sides by folding chairs. A rickety bench and card tables on the “Sleeping Beauty” set, poorly draped, with bare legs showing, give the show an unmitigated discount store feel.

The cast is made up mainly of high school and college students--attractive young people, who acquit themselves physically well enough, but who almost unanimously lack the vocal skills to put across this mostly musical fairy tale. (Chris Webb, who plays the Page and sings narration, is an exception.)

And that’s a shame because the tuneful score, uncredited, would work well otherwise.

Director Herman Boodman has allowed Wendy Weidler as the Bad Fairy to screech her lines into unintelligibility, and hasn’t cautioned her not to approach toddlers in the audience too closely.

To a 2- or 3-year-old, her threatening voice and menacing mask are all too real. At a recent audience, one little boy spent the hour in his mother’s arms, covering his eyes. Terror isn’t amusing.

Laura Frazer’s Good Fairy is lovely--Frazer has a light, charming presence. But, alas, the character has a lot of singing to do, and Frazer isn’t up to it. Nor is Natalie Hadzi-Paulovic as Beauty.

Scott Price plays a very young Prince Charming, who would rather ride his imaginary horse and have adventures than woo a princess. Price looks the part and moves well but doesn’t have fun with the role, and again, the songs defeat him.

Dayna Hinsley perkily communicates the comic aspects of her role as Prince Charming’s Guardian Angel, but speaks too quickly.

Many parents are willing to go to some trouble to seek out live theater for young people. With more care and attention, the American Children’s Theatre could make it worth the effort.

‘SLEEPING BEAUTY’

Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m.

Anaheim Cultural Arts Center, 931 N. Harbor Blvd, Anaheim.

$4 to $5.

Information: (714) 553-3460 or (714) 751-5032.