THE GREAT FAIRY TALE DISASTER

Old Big Bad Wolf is tired and wants a more relaxing fairy tale to be in, so he leaves the pigs behind. The results are not good.

The players are familiar if their young audience knows the classic tales: Cinderella, Jack and his beanstalk, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks. The execution is clunky. The Big Bad Wolf blows off Cinderella’s fairy godmother because “Wolves don’t wear dresses!” and is revolted by the prince’s kiss when he replaces Sleeping Beauty. The Three Bears are entirely pissed off, and they chase the Big Bad Wolf past Rapunzel and over the troll’s bridge. All heck breaks loose then, as a princess kisses a Billy Goat Gruff instead of a frog, and Hansel and Gretel push Prince Charming into the oven. The Wolf gives up, goes back to the Three Little Pigs, the end. Williamson’s art is made in layered swathes of geometric pattern and color. Figures have huge heads and spindly arms and legs. The Big Bad Wolf himself is constructed with arms, legs and tail on an oversized body, his unusual head a long isosceles triangle set in many different pasted-on angles. Visual interest is heightened in tiny details: Baby Bear wears polka-dot headphones, the Big Bad Wolf himself wears a monocle that mostly tumbles out of his pocket.

Children may get a giggle or two but may find the lackluster ending unsatisfying.