Pippi Longstocking at Sutter Street Theatre

On the outskirts of town stands a ramshackle house. It may not seem like much ’til you peek through the railings…then, there’s a horse on the porch, a monkey in the kitchen and a freckle faced, red-pigtailed, whirlwind of a girl in mismatched stockings presiding over all! This is the domain of — ready? — Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim’s Daughter Longstocking.

Pippi is outrageously unsupervised and proud of it. She has what she needs to get by, and if she doesn’t she’ll make something up that will do the trick. Her father is a pirate captain off sailing the seas. Her mother is an angel watching over her from heaven. And neither Mrs. Prysselius, head of the Child Welfare Board, nor Thunder and Bloom, a couple of ne’erdo- wells who try to abscond with the gold in her pirate treasure chest can get the best of her. Neither can the policemen who try to make her go to school, or the school teacher she meets once she goes. (She decides to give school a try once she learns from her neighbors and new very-best friends, Tommy and Annika, that if you go to school, you get a summer vacation.)

But it’s not that she’s unteachable. Pippi swallows her fears of not knowing any of the rules of etiquette and goes to a fancy party. She cares so much more than she’s willing to admit, and she learns a hard lesson that even fun can go too far, and sometimes what starts out as play can end up just plain disrespectful.