CHILDREN’S THEATER REVIEW : Saddleback Cast Acts Like Animals to Teach Lessons

No offense, Big Bird, but you’re old news. Long before you and the rest of the “Sesame Street” gang were hatched, Aesop used a menagerie of precocious critters to teach kids about life’s little ground rules.

Children can get a lively introduction to Aesop’s fables in “Don’t Count Your Chickens Until They Cry Wolf,” by Carol Lynn Wright Pearson with music and lyrics by J.A.C. Redford. Presented by the Saddleback College Theater Department and directed by Patrick J. Fennell, it continues through Aug. 9 in the college’s Fine Arts Complex. “Chickens” features more than a dozen of Aesop’s better-known fables including “The Tortoise and the Hare” and “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.”

Produced at Saddleback once before, in 1987, it was commissioned in 1976 by the Sundance Summer Theatre in Utah, a series of Broadway and family musicals that predates and is separate from the children’s theater development branch of Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute.

With a cast of 10 high school students from South County, this production should appeal to a broad age range. Older children may better comprehend the lessons at hand, but judging from Monday’s opening performance, toddlers and up will get a charge from the audience interaction, bright colors and physical humor.

In fact, the show’s first musical number (which describes the difference between live theater and television or movies), the banter between actors and audience and the recap of the fable message that closes each scene (“Slow and steady wins the race” “People who tell lies are seldom believed, even when they tell the truth”) all cater to novice theatergoers.

Wearing bright polo shirts and identical floral shorts, members of the ensemble don goofy antennae, floppy donkey ears, vivid chiffon wings and other colorful gear to portray Aesop’s characters. Members of the audience are drawn into the action throughout the show.

Without a doubt, Edward Snyder is the cast’s comic standout and one of the more versatile actors as well. A shifty-eyed “Joisey” tough in the title role of “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing,” he is equally convincing as the dim, long-suffering donkey in “The Miller, His Son and Their Donkey.” Reymond Keil, sporting a shaggy mane and an attitude, is a high-decibel braggadocio as the lion in “The Lion and the Mouse.”

Redford’s lyrics (backed here by Tomoko Sato’s piano) get their best showing from Brandi Karren, one of the cast’s strongest singers. As the cocksure fox in “The Fox and the Grapes,” Karren’s brassy rendition of “Flatter Them” brims with vaudeville snap, especially with the addition of Susan Errickson’s choreography. Redford’s ballad “Keep On Keeping On,” an ode to the value of persistence over flash, gets an appropriately plodding rendition by Alexander Rodriguez and Jennifer Lambert as the title characters in “The Tortoise and the Hare.”

That tale may cause some confusion, though. It is the only fable that has been broken up into segments, and the audience is left hanging after the characters’ first brief appearance. Pearson and Fennell would do well to add a line or two during the initial scene, to explain that there is more to come.

Another oddity: In an apparent nod to Colgate-Palmolive’s funding of this production, the tortoise is awarded a giant toothbrush. It’s an awkward moment in an otherwise smooth production, especially since Aesop didn’t write a single fable about the joys of oral hygiene.

‘Don’t Count Your Chickens Until They Cry Wolf’

A production of the Saddleback College theater department, written by Carol Lynn Wright Pearson with music by J.A.C. Redford. Directed by Patrick J. Fennell. Choreography by Susan Errickson. Musical direction by Nicholas DeGregorio. Pianist, Tomoko Sato. Stage manager, Terry Christopher. With Stephanie DeJohn, Brandi Karren, Raymond Keil, Ben Kramer, Jennifer Lambert, Alexander Rodriguez, Sarah Rose, Edward Snyder, Vanessa Villalovos and Mai-Lei Young. Continues Mondays through Thursdays at 10 a.m. and noon through Aug. 6, with additional performances Fridays through Sundays July 31 through Aug. 9, at the Saddleback College fine arts complex, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo. $7. (714) 582-4656.