Review: Revolting Rhymes

65revolting rhymes

• Scenic Design for MCC Theater’s The Other Place by Eugene LeePhotograph: Ahron R.Foster65.ar.65revoltingrhymes01.jpg1365231
• Scenic Design for MCC Theater’s The Other Place by Eugene LeePhotograph: Ahron R.Foster65.ar.65revoltingrhymes02.jpg1365292
• Scenic Design for MCC Theater’s The Other Place by Eugene LeePhotograph: Ahron R.Foster65.ar.65revoltingrhymes03.jpg1365333
• Scenic Design for MCC Theater’s The Other Place by Eugene LeePhotograph: Ahron R.Foster65.ar.65revoltingrhymes04.jpg1365274
• Scenic Design for MCC Theater’s The Other Place by Eugene LeePhotograph: Ahron R.Foster65.ar.65revoltingrhymes05.jpg1365255
• Scenic Design for MCC Theater’s The Other Place by Eugene LeePhotograph: Ahron R.Foster65.ar.65revoltingrhymes06.jpg1365316

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Scenic Design for MCC Theater’s The Other Place by Eugene Lee

Photograph: Ahron R.Foster

Parents who are dedicated to warping their offspring tend to subject them to healthy diets of macabre bedtime stories and lots of camp cabaret tunes as a matter of course. (I speak from experience.) Still, there are only so many night-night read-alongs of Edward Gorey books and repeat viewings of Liza with a Z we can foist on a jaded six-year-old before a seen-it-all boredom sets in. Which is why the Atlantic Theater Company’s production of Roald Dahl’s may be the answer to our prayers: Combining a kid-tested sense of black humor with the sort of overly enthusiastic revue show associated with junior-college theater troupes, it’s an ideal way to further cement a tongue-in-cheek sensibility into impressionable prepubescent minds.

Never one to shy away from the grotesque and Grand Guignol, Dahl has long been a go-to author for weaning underage readers on deliciously demented storytelling. Even with cute puppets and papier-mâché heads, the stage adaptation of his 1982 book of fractured fairy tales certainly doesn’t skimp on the sick and twisted: Goldilocks is put on trial for breaking and entering, Little Red Riding Hood is a superheroine in a sparkly catsuit, and anyone who’s wished that the story of Cinderella had more decapitations in it will be tickled pink. (At the Sunday matinee show I went to, the audience was equally divided between grown-ups who seemed utterly appalled at exposing their children to evil stepsisters losing their heads and hip moms and dads who giggled, loudly and naughtily, alongside their belly-laughing kids.)

Still, adults who have no problem with the dark detours these familiar stories take may find themselves rolling their eyes at the musical numbers—bump-and-grind Broadway razzamatazz, ’70s Studio 54 jams and “Yo, yo, yo!” hip-hop parodies circa 1994—and the SNL-ish bumper skits (caricatured New Yawk accents, fashionista parodies, silly hillbillies). But director-composer Elizabeth Swados and the twentysomething cast sell the shtick with such let’s-put-on-a-show brio that kids are apt to love the sheer ADD rush of it all. If just one youngster leaves the theater with a new appreciation for the offbeat, the show will have done its job. As we walked out, my daughter turned to me and said, “I like their version of ‘Red Riding Hood’ better, actually. And that music they were playing is called ‘disco’? We should listen to that more around the house while we dance around and I pretend to chop your head off.”

That’s my little revolting girl.

plays at the Lucille Lortel Theatre through Apr 24.