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Stage

At Acorn Theatre, it's child's play

Thurber's Fables gives the company a break from more adult fare, though grownups will enjoy this show, too.

By ROBERT HICKS
Published February 9, 2006

To inaugurate its permanent home, the 2-year-old Acorn Theatre ventured away from the serious fare it has produced so far and chose Thurber's Fables, a play that appeals to both children and adults.

"We've wanted to do a children's show for a while now," said Levi Kaplan, artistic director and founder. "Thurber's Fables is near and dear to our heart. . . . It's a piece that's kind of fun. It underscores the sense of play and fun that we are trying to capture at Acorn Theatre."

The play opens Saturday and runs through March 5 at Acorn's new home in Suite A132 at Centro Ybor, 1600 E Eighth Ave., Tampa.

The play is Paul Hughes' adaptation of humorist and cartoonist James Thurber's Fables of Our Time (1940) and Further Fables of Our Time (1956). Hughes is an actor and director well-known in Central Florida for his children's theater productions and as artistic director of the Pied Piper Players at Lakeland's Community Theater.

Kaplan appeared in Hughes' play as a student at Harrison School for the Performing Arts in Lakeland.

"I became enamored with the comedy, the social sarcasm of these stories," he says. "I thought they were very clever and very intelligent."

As the show's director, Kaplan, 29, has added interactive elements to Hughes' work as a way to make it more fun for children. "We're really going for a grade school type of fun: coloring books, singing songs and audience participation things," he said.

Hughes' Thurber's Fables includes adaptations of The Unicorn in the Garden, The Shrike and the Chipmunk, The Stork Who Married a Dumb Wife and The Seal Who Became Famous.

"Most of them are some of Thurber's lesser-known fables, not the really popular ones," Kaplan said. "It's a very different kind of thing from Thurber's Carnival."

Actors David C. Baker, Kelly Sardinas, Rebecca Goldman and Kathy Robinson narrate the vignettes and portray a range of characters, including seals, storks, chipmunks, a mole and a princess.

Moral lessons are directed at social foibles in the modern world.

"The moral statements are very tongue-in-cheek," Kaplan said. "It takes a childlike, satirical look at the social world around us."

The fledgling Acorn Theatre has staged its previous productions - Death of a Salesman, The Good Doctor, Oleanna and The Glass Menagerie - at Hillsborough Community College, at Tampa Prep's black box theater and at Galaxy Theatre in St. Petersburg. All the while, the company has raised money and searched for a permanent location.

Now that it has a home, the company hopes to find sponsors and to create a summer children's theater camp that will allow young participants to write, produce and perform their plays.

Thurber's Fables will be presented by the Acorn Theatre Company at 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 12:30 p.m. Sundays, through March 5, at Centro Ybor, Suite 132A, 1600 E Eighth Ave., Tampa. $8, $5 children. 813 728-5324; www.acorntheatre.org

[Last modified February 8, 2006, 09:04:06]