Bridgette Dunlap

Director

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Grimms' Tales

Adapted and directed by Bridgette Dunlap
Atlantic for Kids
Atlantic Theater, March 2004

 

with Geoff Berman, Preston Dane, Kate Finney, Mae Gibson, Sara Montgomery, Elizabeth Neptune, Heather Oakley and Matt Wall

Set design by Eric Southern, costume design by Daphne Javitch, artwork by Manny Silva


The New York Times
No Fairy Godmothers
By LAUREL GRAEBER
March 12, 2004

Don't expect every character in ''Grimm's Tales'' to live happily ever after. Don't expect some of them to live at all. But Bridgette Dunlap, who adapted and directed these four stories (and stars in them, too), knows that a little gruesomeness can be very funny.

Dressed in denim and T-shirts and transforming themselves with headgear and other props, fresh-faced young alumni of the Atlantic Theater Company acting school cavort onstage like eager 20-something counselors from Camp Grimm. Beginning this hourlong show by boogieing to a pop tune, they soon plunge into ''Hansel and Gretel,'' passing the narration around like a basketball at a pickup game. It's hard to get upset over Hansel and Gretel's murderous mother (yes, she wants to abandon the kids) when Hansel (Preston Dane) is a towering crybaby, and a narrator (Sara Montgomery) is reprimanded for going on too long when she enumerates the ingredients in the witch's candy house.

''Ashputtle'' (better known as ''Cinderella'') is also the purist version, complete with a cleaver-wielding stepmother (Elizabeth Neptune) and sweetly singing doves and sparrows that wreak Hitchcockian vengeance on the stepsisters (Ms. Dunlap and Mae Gibson). The violence is bloodless, though, and you have to hand it to Ms. Dunlap for expressing what a lot of us have always wondered: why can't the prince just identify his love by sight, extreme makeover notwithstanding? ''You're real good with faces, Buddy,'' this Ashputtle (Kate Finney) snaps as she tries on the shoe.

The last two tales are ''The Bird, the Mouse and the Sausage'' (grim but silly) and ''The Frog King,'' Ms. Dunlap's most hilarious invention. Here the Frog (Matt Wall) sues the Princess (Ms. Dunlap) for breach of contract. This results in an uproarious trial in which the Big Bad Wolf is the Frog's lawyer, the Three Blind Mice are (extremely unreliable) witnesses and the judge (Geoff Berman) is Rumpelstiltskin. Think of it as Court TV in the enchanted forest.