THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES
Here are just a few of the stupid things about this adaptation. First, it’s set in Japan, which virtually assures the perpetuation of insulting cultural stereotypes. Second, it has a Kabuki motif that has almost nothing to do with Kabuki theater except that, you know, it’s kind of oriental and it justifies a cheap set and a couple of black-costumed stagehands who make an elaborate, unnecessary, and insufferably cute ordeal out of changing scenes. Third, the play is overextended with bland filler–lots of hyperactivity and trivial plot embroidery–which only obscures or distracts from the salient features of the fairy tale. Last, and most heinous of all, the ending has been changed.
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You’d think that director Kent Nicholson would realize that it’s acts like this that killed vaudeville. This cast couldn’t sit on a whoopee cushion to any comic effect, because they’d know they were sitting on it, and make a big display of it, and the display itself would bleed the gag of any spontaneity or surprise. As evidence, I refer to an extremely well behaved matinee audience–a sure sign of failure in children’s theater.
