‘Pippi’ Raises Eyebrows on Southland Tour

She’s a shocking, pugnacious, unsquelchable little girl--a menace to polite society. She slips whoopee cushions on chairs, keeps a horse in the kitchen, has a suitcase full of gold and never goes to school. Her hair defies gravity and she’s particularly adept at puncturing inflated adult egos.

Naturally, children love her.

Pippi Longstocking has been raising parental eyebrows and satisfying youthful anarchistic yens since her creation by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren in 1941.

She continues her shameless shenanigans in “Pippi Longstocking,” a musical presented by the highly respected Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis. The show makes its last Southland tour stop Wednesday at the Smothers Theatre in Malibu.

Don’t look very deep, but it’s a sprightly and handsome production, of a quality seldom found in children’s theater.

Pippi (Jennifer Green), whose mother is “an angel in heaven” and papa “a pirate in the South Seas,” moves into Villa Villekulla with her horse and monkey (puppets) and makes friends with Tommy and Anika (Vincent Kartheiser and Rachel Wilkie).

But the town’s shocked adults want to “help” Pippi by putting her in a children’s home.

It’s not easy. Whenever prune-faced Mrs. Prysselius (Rosalie Tenseth) is around Pippi, she’s swept into a tango, or makes a social gaffe, thanks to the aforementioned whoopee cushion.

Pippi strands two policemen (David Roberts and John Paul Foreman) on her roof--they’re incensed that a child is not only living by herself, but “enjoying it too.” And she routs two slapstick burglars (Roberts and Foreman again) intent on stealing her gold.

(Don Yunker’s charming cottage set, done in fairy-tale watercolors with Swedish flower painting designs, revolves to reveal both interior and exterior.)

Pippi tries to make amends at an uproarious coffee party, by teaching Tommy and Anika proper social etiquette. “Never pick your nose in public” and don’t spit on the floor--the ceiling is better and a challenge besides. Gleeful giggles from a weekend audience at UCLA’s Wadsworth Theatre.

The cast does a lively job, although Green is too mature for the title role--emphasized by the presence of two real children (Kartheiser and Wilkie)--and her heartiness doesn’t have much depth. But her energy doesn’t disappoint and director Brian Russell keeps things moving at a happy clip. (Alternate cast members play the leads in some performances.)

The voices are true, and the music by Roberta Carlson and lyrics by Carlson and Thomas W. Olson are alternately funny and wistful. A highlight is deliciously pantomimed adult conversation with musical punctuation.