May 10: Once Upon a Time

Beauty and the Beast opens this Sunday for Spokane Children's Theatre, part of the 60th anniversary season. It's an ambitious undertaking: the full Disney version based on the popular animated movie. Disney is synonymous with musical fairy tales, but theatre is full of shows and songs based on "Once Upon a Time."

- Ray Bolger performed in the 1969 show "All American," where he and Eileen Herlie sang a wistful make-believe.

- In honor of the Children's Theatre production, the opening song from Beauty and the Beast, the stage version.
- The Royal Shakespeare Company's stage version of the Judy Garland film The Wizard of Oz.
- The best fairy-tale show by far is Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods. Hello Little Girl introduces the wolf to Little Red Riding Hood, and I Know Things Now is her summation of what happened and the lessons she takes.

Cinderella also stars in Into the Woods, with her dilema of being stuck on the steps of the palace. But first, Rodgers and Hammerstein turned the same story into a television special with Julie Andrews. Edie Adams is the Fairy Godmother.

- Carol Burnett made her stage debut as a very un-typical princess in Once Upon a Mattress, a retelling of The Princess and the Pea. She's got to pass a test in order to marry the prince she loves, and is studying by reading the fairy-tale history of the kingdom.

- Hans Christian Andersen wrote many beloved fairytales, and the Danny Kaye musical of the author's life showcased many of the sweet stories, including Thumbelina.

One of the interesting facets of fairy tales is how they can represent fascets of our ordinary lives.

- Pajama Game: Young love usually feels like a fairy tale, so why not use fairy tales to tell someone how much you love him/her?

- Two Fairy Tales: Stephen Sondheim initially meant this song to introduce the sunny ingenue and moody son-in-law of A Little Night Music. Goes to show that fairy tales mean different things to different people.

- Meadowlark: The show is The Baker's Wife, by Stephen Schwartz (more of his songs in July as Cour d'Alene Summer Theatre present his show Pippin). A womanis torn between her older husband and an exciting young stranger, and uses a fairytale to sort out her situation.

- Race You To The Top of the Morning: From "The Secret Garden," the father secretly reads to his ill child every night, again putting his situation into fairytale form to tell the sleping child.

- The show Once Upon an Island is a beautiful Caribbean-style fairy tale, with a young girl in love with a prince-like rich boy. Like the original Little Mermaid, this young woman does not get the boy, and sacrifices herself for love, transformed into something beautiful. The final song is special not for the end of the story, but the storytellers themselves explaining why they tell the story: "for out of what we live and we believe, our lives become the stories that we weave."


Incidentally, Peter Pan is playing at Coeur d'Alene Summer Theatre this summer, and in July we'll have a collection of songs from the many different versions.

May 3: And Now For Something Completely Different

Our pledge drive request show brought some interesting results: requests for comedy songs. Jimmy Durante, Victor Borge, Spike Jones, more Tom Lehrer. Almost all of these songs have been performed on stage. Comedy Tonight!