One More "Ugly"

From Time Out Chicago

Review
Sleeping Ugly
Book by William Massolia. Music and lyrics by George Howe. Dir. Richard Barletta. With Leah Morrow, Colleen McSherry, Jill Hames, Steve Best. Griffin Theatre at Theatre Building Chicago.

The plain-Jane heroine of Griffin’s world-premiere family fairy-tale musical— literally a gawky girl named Jane whose physical attributes are less than dazzling—is there to remind us that we, too, can have the world’s riches without being a big meanie about it. As adapted by Massolia from Jane Yolen’s picture book, and played with perky-jerky charm by Morrow, she’s especially preferable to spoiled brat Miserella (McSherry), a screechingly obnoxious princess who expects the world served to her on a silver platter. (Both fall asleep in the forest; only one gets awakened by a prince’s kiss.)
And although Sleeping Ugly poses itself as a cockeyed, deconstructionist take on nursery-school storytelling, it’s still basically a by-the-Golden-Book version of enchanted royal life in the woods. What it has going for it, though, is a book by Massolia that’s clever without exhausting us, a zippy (if canned and synthesized) score by Howe, and, par for the Griffin, a small, rock-solid ensemble that always keeps us engaged. Squeaky-clean (and just generally squeaky) Best as the Prince and several cameo characters, and Hames as a Cloris Leachman–like fairy godmother, are both especially inviting.
It’s worth noting, though, that Sleeping Ugly doesn’t take the darkly adult route of other grown-up fairy-tale shows (most famously Wicked, even though the two admirably share a feminist bent). So if it’s a night of depravity you seek, look elsewhere. This one’s basically for the kids.—Christopher Piatt