Striving Toward ‘Heaven’

“Far from home, a small caterpillar searches for food.” The “caterpillar” referred to in the narrative of Jose Cruz Gonzalez’s play, “The Highest Heaven,” is really a hungry, growing young boy named Huracan, lost in a small Mexican mountain village, far from his home in central California.

The play, with parallel references to the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, chronicles how Huracan survives and grows until he is a young man--a “butterfly”--ready to return home, with the help of a gruff black man. Called “El Negro” by the Indians, the elderly man lives on the mountain guarding the winter sanctuary of the migrating butterflies, as well as a dark secret of his own.

Uneven but often genuinely moving, the drama is presented by the Mark Taper Forum’s youth company, PLAY (Performing for Los Angeles Youth). Directed by Diane Rodriguez, it is touring Southland schools and is being presented free to the general public at some venues.

The evolving father-son relationship between El Negro (Ricke V. Howell) and Huracan (Omar Gomez), with its unspoken message of racial harmony, is the play’s strength. Flashbacks depicting Huracan and his mother (Christine Deaver) before and during their forced repatriation from California to Mexico via train during the Great Depression, are awkwardly executed. So is the comic relief: labored scenes with nasty villainess Dona Elena (Deaver again), who wants to destroy El Negro, the butterflies and Huracan.

Both the play and the production have a work-in-progress feel. But Howell, a powerful presence, is a strong anchor, and his dignified, layered performance also lends substance to Gomez’s earnest depiction of 12-year-old Huracan, so that their final scene together packs a punch.

* “The Highest Heaven,” today, 6:30 p.m.: HOLA (Heart of Los Angeles), 3300 Wilshire Blvd. Saturday, 10:30 a.m.: King Drew Magnet High School, 1601 E. 120th St., Los Angeles. March 4, 2 p.m.: Plaza de la Raza, 3540 N. Mission Road. Free. (213) 972-7587.

Get in the Act: Never mind the queen’s first-born child. What Rumpelstiltskin wants for spinning straw into gold in a new Storybook Theatre production is the play’s stage manager: She’s so efficient, he figures she’s just what he needs to organize his life.

There’s only one problem: Once he’s got her, there’s no one to cue the music and he can’t do his big musical number.

In this frisky new twist on the familiar tale for young children at Theatre West, with a “love can’t be bought” message, the stage manager (Leesa Freed) isn’t the only “impromptu” actor who joins the cast. Audience members are recruited to play the King and Queen, another is chosen to be flower girl at Prince Charming’s wedding, and four others become pages, parading down the theater’s aisles with the Prince (Matthew Wiedle).

When Rumpelstiltskin (David Brandt) first helps Carly (Molly Reynolds) become Princess by spinning straw into golden gifts for the Prince--a monogrammed belt buckle and a wristwatch--and then demands payment, audience members offer him their own possessions to get Carly off the hook.

The entire audience is asked for counsel as the hourlong play progresses, and often offers it without being asked: When the flower girl was chosen at a recent performance, a little boy clearly felt that they needed a “ring boy” too. Another pint-sized spectator volunteered in all seriousness that he’d been married before.

One child is chosen at the beginning of the play to be Rumpelstiltskin’s confidant and keep his name a “secret”; later, this child takes center stage as the Prince and Princess try to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name.

The cast of adults, which also includes Jacque Lynn Colton as Carly’s jovial mom, is likable, and effervescent Reynolds shines. The tuneful music is by Michael Paul; the lyrics by Lloyd J. Schwartz, who wrote the show and co-directs with Barbara Mallory Schwartz, are defter in some songs than others. The jaunty “Spinning Straw Into Gold,” sung by Reynolds and Brandt, is the highlight.

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* “Rumpelstiltskin,” Theatre West, 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. W., Los Angeles, Saturdays at 1 p.m. through June 17. $8. (818) 761-2203.