HANG LOOSE, MOTHER GOOSE
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To do that Hang Loose comes up with some inventive ways to work its audience into its act, which is appropriate for a story that celebrates resourcefulness. The involvement isn’t just a onetime thing like the famous “Do you believe in fairies?” moment in Peter Pan; it comes as part of the plot. Judging from the results, this is how a lot of kids want children’s theater to be. Spencer’s play also serves as an antidote to what kids usually do on Saturday mornings, i.e., marinate their minds in front of the tube; the plot encourages the kids in the theater to actually enter the story and to participate in its resolution.
Mother Goose has been captured by the Crooked Old Man, who thinks nursery rhymes are old hat. He thinks kids will be more interested in the violence of his own life. So he imprisons Mother Goose in the giant storybook she lives in, and tries to force her to ghostwrite his autobiography. If Mother Goose is a symbol for gentle make-believe and the power of the imagination to improve on reality, the Crooked Old Man, who’s cynical and selfish, represents mindless mayhem and our inability to see beyond the obvious.
Apart from its subliminal messages, the play provides an unforced pleasure in the delight on a kid’s face when she’s suddenly changed from a spectator into a tree onstage. Besides, being confident enough to play onstage is a step toward the sort of self-reliance with which Hansel and Gretel outwit the witch and Mother Goose’s children trap the Crooked Old Man (in a tricky game of “Simon Says”).
