BWW Reviews: An A-OK SHREK Comes To AOK Stage At New Oxford

Acts of Kindness Theatre Company, headed by Rene and Jessica Staub, has been producing summer musicals for charity for several years now, having contributed $80,000 to the community in that time - roughly $10,000 a year donated to improve area lives, mostly around Adams County, since its inception. It's hard to argue with that kind of track record, other than to ask if they can top their previous productions.

This year, it's SHREK: THE MUSICAL. With a huge cast, a huge production staff, a huge production, and the largest pit orchestra to be anywhere in the area in a while (these days four violinists in an orchestra pit is cause for national celebration), it clearly takes a high school's auditorium and large stage to present the show - and even then, it's built out further than the school's stage. For those who don't know it, SHREK: THE MUSICAL is most definitely not SHREK the movie. With book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire and music by Jeanine Tesort, and with a few odd additions to that, particularly by The Monkees, to recall the movie to mind anyway, this play is not entirely the expected, and Staub's production of the 2010 national tour version of the show maintains that surprise.

Be warned: SHREK is not quite for everyone. It's basically family fare, but there's a small amount of rough language and of innuendo, so some people might not want very young children there - although it's the slightly older ones who will be the ones who understand it and make their parents blush. It's not for those who don't like very green leading men. And if you happen to like your fairy tales fairly traditional, forget it - this is as fractured as fairy tales get. The story's also got a healthy dose of underlying sexism, as... well, how long should a princess wait around in a tower, anyway, before she just rescues herself? Which Princess Fiona doesn't, although she seems to have the strength of character to do it if she weren't hoodwinked by the story about the handsome prince. If there were any part of any fairy tale that should have been stood on its ear, that would be the one, and it's the one that SHREK doesn't attack in some way.

There's some outstanding talent in this production. Jeremiah Herbert, the lead ogre himself, brings a big, green monster with a heart of melting ice to life, and Evan Brooks as Donkey is the riotously funny sidekick to help do it. The entire Princess Fiona trio (Alice Still as young Fiona, Shannon Hutchinson as teen Fiona, and Faye Hilker as the adult princess) is delightful and performs a spectacular trio on "I Know It's Today" - even though she still should have realized that the story about the handsome prince was a major hoax on women and has been since day one. (True, if she realized that, there wouldn't be a plot here.) And Drew Becker as Lord Farquaad, the royally ambitious offspring of a certain fairy tale princess and one of seven short companions of hers, is simply astonishing in an extremely tricky part. In the fairy tale assemblage, the women of the Three Blind Mice trio are also a very fine set of performers, making what might otherwise only be a running sight gag into a charming piece of musical schtick.

Despite this writer's issues with SHREK's fairy tale gender stereotyping, the message of the play that different is good is nonetheless one that can't be disputed. It's a vital one for younger audiences to hear, and these days, adults need to hear it as well. The production's staging of "Freak Flag" makes the point vividly. Most of the stagings for the musical productions in the show are delightful, and the choreography by Dawn Glass is spectacular for a community-based show. It's a shame that the music itself doesn't live up, in most cases, to the very hard work that the orchestra, performers, and choreographer have put into it. As musicals themselves go, SHREK is good but not great, but there's great, heartfelt, and determined effort put forth by AOK's cast and crew to make it as good as it gets, and at that worthy effort they succeed.

As with ANNIE previously, this seems to be the year of SHREK in the area - AOK's production is the first of several in the next twelve months, including York Little Theatre and Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre. While ANNIE may be the technically and musically superior show, "Tomorrow" and a number of other points get old quite quickly. SHREK isn't as clever musically or lyrically, but for those with children or grandchildren who may wish for visits to multiple productions to take place, it may cloy less, since it's funnier and uses the metaphor of fairy tale to take on the issues of social and personal nonconformity, an indisputably critical topic in modern society. There's no doubt that AOK's set a high production value bar for others to meet, and that's an equally good thing.

At New Oxford High School through Sunday. See their Facebook page for information.

Photo courtesy of ACTS of Kindness Theatre

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