A ‘Shakespearience’ at the Children’s Museum

At the Los Angeles Children’s Museum, a young man in Elizabethan garb asked a roomful of children if they remembered who he was: “You know, the fellow with the beard. . . . What’s his name?”

The children, ages about 10 and under, shouted triumphantly, “William Shakespeare!”

A bunch of kids bursting with Shakespeare-consciousness?

Sure. Thanks to the Shakespeare Festival/LA’s imaginative puppet version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” part of a daylong celebration of the Bard’s 425th birthday.

Short but satisfying, this “Dream” for second- to fifth-graders, is designed, written and performed by Renee and William Bullock. They use just a few threads from Shakespeare’s tangle of tricks: Titania and Oberon’s quarrel, Bottom’s spell and Helena’s pursuit of Demetrius. Shakespeare, as a dreaming boy, plays mischievous Puck.

Classic and modified lines mix smoothly, delivered with clarity and a sense of fun. (For adults, artistic director Ben Donenberg has slyly inserted Shakespeare play titles into the dialogue.)

The beautifully modeled puppets (also by the Bullocks) are delights, particularly the fairy monarchs--great, golden insects with feathery antennae and grasshopper limbs.

Dance workshops and a talk with Will Shakespeare himself about Elizabethan theater and costumes preceded the show.

With an Ahmanson Foundation grant, Shakespeare Festival/LA, which provides free Shakespeare to the public, came up with its “Shakespearience” program, Donenberg said, “to introduce children to Shakespeare’s world with a participatory experience, instead of making it just a reading exercise.”

It will be seen in area schools, libraries and after-school city day-care programs, as funding permits.

‘Spinning the Big Top’

What do children dream about? “Frogs,” “flying saucers,” “parties” and “scawey things,” according to an informal audience poll taken at Santa Monica’s Powerhouse Theatre. There, the Mother Goose Theatre is celebrating a child’s imagination in “Spinning the Big Top.”

Last seen in a colorful staging at the Los Angeles Children’s Museum two years ago, Bennett Mc-Clellan’s show about a little girl who daydreams about the circus rather than clean her room has a bland look here, but director Mary Cappelli adds pizazz with almost non-stop audience participation.

During the fast-moving hour, the audience provides key dialogue and has the opportunity to play monkeys, “ferocious beasties,” tightrope walkers and clowns.

Monica Silvera as reluctant room-cleaner Hero and Bill Lauten as her brother Bro, “imagine” encounters with lions and bears, temperamental acrobats and clowns who insist on being called “amusement engineers.” They’re all played by a five-member ensemble in T-shirts and sweatpants who alternately don animal snouts, mustaches and clown noses.

It’s a good-natured giggle for preschoolers, with this caveat : the cast needs to turn down the volume--Silvera, in particular, compensates for audience exuberance by delivering her lines at a shout.