Having just seen (and written a review of) Shakespeare’s rarely produced play, Cymbeline, I was quite curious when I saw an announcement for The Actor’s Gang’s new, free, outdoor children’s theatre production of Cymbeline the Puppet King. For one thing, Shakespear’s play is quite violent. With a name like “The Puppet King” I thought that the use of puppets might mitigate the violence a bit. Be forewarned. There are no puppets. And much of the violence is still intact, which left me very uneasy. Although it is “consequence-less” violence, wherein the victim “gets better”, which left me even more uneasy.

When the show first started, after a brief, fun prologue, the cast climbed the platform serving as the stage, stood in a circle, the music started, then nothing happened. Finally, mid line, one of the actors remembered to start singing and the rest of the cast joined in. I thought, “what are we in for, now?” The staging seemed odd; the platform is open on all sides and the audience was sitting on both the north and south side of it, so the actors had to shout their lines and turn their heads back and forth to be heard. I was beginning to fidget.

Then I started noticing the children in the audience, some quite young. They were enthralled! Almost universally, they were frozen, watching in rapt anticipation, and it was then I realized children’s theatre is a very different animal from regular, adult theatre, so a different eye must be used in reviewing it. I’m sadly too old to be a wide-eyed kid any longer, it seems, so analyzing the audience’s reaction to the play rather than my jaded reaction to it seems in order.

The play used a combination of modern day language, actual Shakespearean dialogue from Cymbeline and song. (Again, no puppets, though. I was really disappointed by that. I’m sure the kids didn’t notice.) I’m sure a lot of the verbal humor went well over the youngsters’ heads, but, much like the old Bullwinkle shows in the sixties, there was enough physical and relational humor that they found funny to keep them enthralled. There were moments when they started to fidget, moments that were a bit slow or too Shakespearean, I suspect, but for the most part they enjoyed themselves tremendously.

They obviously followed the plot very well, also (although I’m not quite sure they followed the whole “I’m a girl pretending to be a boy” bit, which Shakespeare loved so much), which speaks volumes for both the production and my underestimation of today’s children. It was, for the most part, a fairly literal translation of Shakespear’s work (minus a sub plot or two about adultery and political and sexual intrigue) tweaked from the original tragedy and romance into the realm of farce. The wicked queen was played with broad abandon by Donna Jo Thorndale. The king, a very goofy Steven M. Porter. The queen’s son, Cloten the Rotten was played with appropriately fey petulance by Adam Jefferis. There were three young school children who served as a sort of delightful and earnest Greek chorus and filled in as wolves and various Roman soldiers, etc., Jorge Deneve, Eliana Pipes and Glenda Nicks.

The rest of the cast included Erin Anderson, Mary Ellen O’Donnell and Kirstin Hinton. It was written by Angela Berliner and directed by Will Pellegrini. The music was by Chris Schultz.

Cymbeline the Puppet King is performed Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m. through August 30, 2009 in Media Park, the lawn just in front of the Actors’ Gang theatre, the Ivy Substation.

Media Park is located at 9070 Venice Boulevard, Culver City, 90232, one block west of the intersection of Venice and Culver Blvd. There is two hour free parking across the street in the Ince Street/Trader Joe’s parking structure.

Ticket price: Free

More information at www.theActorsGang.com or by phone at (310) 838-4264.