Going Back to the Source for ‘Lion, Witch and Wardrobe’ : Children’s theater: What Theatreworks / USA had at first conceived as a one-hour version of ‘Narnia’ is now ‘a kind of Kabuki / story theater style’ staging of the C.S. Lewis novel of good and evil.

When one of the country’s leading youth theaters, New York-based Theatreworks/USA, decided it wanted to add a one-hour version of C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” to its national touring repertory, it went to the creators of “Narnia,” the full-length 1985 musical based on the Lewis tale that played London and New York.

“Narnia” writer Jules Tasca, composer Thomas Tierney and lyricist Ted Drachman were agreeable. Although they work primarily in stage and screen for adults, they had collaborated on two other musicals for the 33-year-old children’s theater company, and besides, it was assumed by all that the adaptation would be a snap.

Instead, after struggling with initial drafts of the show last year, Tasca finally returned to the source--Lewis’ epic children’s novel of good versus evil--and Tierney and Drachman wrote new songs. Rather than a condensed “Narnia,” the three came up with a brand-new show.

It can be seen Saturday at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, Feb. 19 at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre and on Feb. 27 at the Norris Theatre on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

“It seemed easy on the face of it,” Tasca said in a phone interview from New York, “but how do you cut (a 2 1/2-hour musical to one hour) and not make it bleed? How are you going to do it so everything is there? We had horrible suggestions--do it with only two kids (there are four in the story). That’s like doing the ‘Two Little Pigs.’

“So instead of shortening the musical, we went back to the original source material and it became a new concept.”

The story now unfolds “in a kind of Kabuki/story theater style,” Tasca said, “using silk banners and masks that move fast from scene to scene. We broke up the speeches, so it wouldn’t be stereotypical story theater,” and the actors use masks to change character.

“We tried it out last year in four colleges in New York,” Tasca said. “After each production, we rewrote it again.”

Tasca gives Theatreworks credit for being “tough cookies” when it comes to the quality of its shows that are seen by almost 3 million children a year. Theater for young people is “a genre unto itself that has to be mastered,” Tasca said.

“Look, any kid in college, you can say here’s ‘Snow White’ and ‘Cinderella’ and he can get you a script, but Theatreworks would never do one like that. . . . We have arguments about what works, but that’s how you get a good product, when people care.”

“When we’re introducing a show with tryout performances, you can see very quickly when the kids are not involved,” said Theatreworks’ artistic director and co-founder Jay Harnick. “If there is a moment of restlessness in the audience, you have to address that moment because it’s not the kids’ fault, it’s the show’s fault.

“Theater has so much capacity to entertain, to educate, even to inspire,” he said, “and kids deserve the best. And since it is the first show many kids will see, we aspire to (high) standards. No play, no ballet, no opera is any more important than the first one you see.”

The next Theatreworks show in the Southland will be “Charlotte’s Web” in April. Of the mostly familiar material that tours, Harnick said: “Marketing is the reason. Children’s theater income is limited. It’s not by accident that what you see touring are essentially adaptations. What we hope is that we find an approach that is unique and provides a surprise.”

The nonprofit Theatreworks/USA has a repertory of more than 70 shows--biographies, issue-oriented plays and adaptations from literature--performed by adult professionals and commissioned from newcomers as well as from veterans such as Ossie Davis, Mary Rodgers, Joe Raposo, Charles Strouse and Alice Childress.

Among Theatreworks/USA’s acting alumni who have gone on to higher-profile achievements are Henry Winkler, F. Murray Abraham and Sherman Hemsley.