Athletic Occidental Children’s Theater Wrestles Wild ‘Beauty and the Beatnik’

Like, dig, daddio. It’s fairy tale time again for Occidental Children’s Theater, and this year’s offering is “Beauty and the Beatnik,” a bongo-thumping, WWF-loving comic make-over of “Beauty and the Beast.”

The Beast here is a former wrestling pro who is under a spell that turned him into a peace-loving beatnik; Beauty and her family are professional wrestlers.

Regrettably only a once-a-year event, Occidental Children’s Theater shows are held outdoors on a grassy area beside Occidental College’s hillside amphitheatre. Year by year, the physically demanding, creatively amusing shows have become something to look forward to on sunny summer mornings. This year is no exception. (New canopies this year provide added protection from the sun for the audience-in-the-round area.)

The format remains the same: three humorously adapted folk tales and one wild, original fairy-tale romp, improvised and scripted by director Jamie Angell and the youthful ensemble, performed without props or sets.

Under Angell’s crisp direction and movement coach Nick Erickson’s guidance, this year’s cast members--Angela Berliner, Rich Bianco, Corinda Bravo, Aaron Henne, Ursula McClelland and Joe Quadres--use the dialogue and their bodies to create whimsical landscapes where just about anything can happen.

In a Sioux tale, “Coyote, Iktome and the Rock,” trickster Coyote (Berliner) steals back a blanket he draped over a strange rock. The Rock (Bianco) is so affronted that he rolls off in pursuit of Coyote with road kill on his mind. Creating some of the show’s best visual effects, the amazing Bianco, hunched over, arms and legs rounded into boulder shape, somersaults over the carpeted performance area, chasing Coyote across a river (actors using swaths of material for waves), and knocking down a forest of trees (actors standing upright).

The ways in which the actors form various configurations to serve as sets and props--in this case, doorways, cupboards and caves, tables and chairs, trees, a storm, the sun, an elephant and, memorably, a rowboat--is always a highlight of the show.

Other stories are “What Is in the Bamboo Tube?” from Laos and “The Magic Mortar,” a Japanese tale. The show ends with the headliner story, which sets up the fairy tale romance when Beauty’s father totals his car while driving home and seeks shelter at the Beatnik’s pad.

Beauty (Berliner) arrives, soon discovers the Beatnik’s gold wrestling trophies, and then her dim-witted, greedy wrestling brothers appear on the scene. The tale confuses beatniks with “Mellow Yellow” hippie-dom and sends a mixed message about whether nonviolence or a solid smack-down is a better way of resolving conflict, but its wacky humor is nonstop and appeals to all ages.* “Beauty and the Beatnik,” Occidental College, 1600 Campus Road, Eagle Rock, L.A., Thursdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. Ends Aug. 25. Children, $5; adults, $8. (323) 259-2922. Running time: 1 hour.

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“Stains, Junk and Other Necessities of Life,” a multimedia, slice-of-real-life performance piece presented by students at Dayton, Ohio’s Northridge High School, will have its West Coast premiere on Tuesday at the Santa Monica Playhouse. An unusual collaborative effort between the playhouse’s artistic directors and playwrights Chris DeCarlo and Evelyn Rudie, 15-to 18-year-old students and their school’s drama director, Jay Weiss, the piece reflects the teenagers’ desire to address specific concerns and needs and to strengthen their community.

Presented by the Northridge Play Project, the dramatic work looks through teenage eyes at depression, love, fear, rejection, media messages about beauty, and “the perks and pressures of life as a junkyard dog.”

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* “Stains, Junk and Other Necessities of Life,” Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 4th St., Santa Monica, Tuesday at 4 and 8 p.m. $12.50. (310) 394-9779, Ext. 2.