When we think of pre-Disney fairy tales, we often think of terrifying, sternly moralistic fables. That was indeed how the stories often made it onto the page, but before fairy tales ever made it into books, they were told for hundreds of years around kitchens and campfires, expert storytellers delighting mixed-age audiences with thrills, twists, and often-ribald humor.
Open Eye Figure Theater, a nearly 15-year-old company based in Minneapolis, understands that spirit well. For many years they brought it to their popular Nativity pageant — featuring Kevin Kling as a Joseph who was indignant at being cuckolded by the Holy Spirit — and now they bring it to Strumply Peter, an adaptation of Heinrich Hoffman's 1845 collection of stories about children who receive cosmic punishment for their misbehavior.
Strumply Peter debuted at Open Eye's cozy space nestled under the shadow of I-35W in February; it's now being revived for a two-week run leading up to a national puppet theater festival being held from Sept. 25-28 at Open Eye and In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater.
Michael Sommers, Open Eye's co-director and the creator of Strumply Peter, describes the show as "a toy opera." That can be understood in the sense of it being an opera about toys — which, in part, it is — and, more fundamentally, a toy version of an opera. It's concise in length (just over an hour), small in scale, and seemingly modest in its subject matter.
Just because no one's delivering a head on a platter, though, don't think Strumply Peter is tame entertainment: early on, two children are ground into dough that's put into an oven to bake into a cake; at the end of the show, that cake is fed back to alternate-universe versions of those children. Probably don't bring your kindergarteners, but your eight-year-old might love it.
Most of the show is set in the subterranean lair of the title character (Noah Sommers Haas), a gleefully horrific figure who's never cut his fingernails and never combed his hair. Clad by costumer Susan Haas in a dandyish outfit that suggests Mozart on a bender, Strumply Peter goes forth at night to haunt the dreams of little children who disobey their parents.
Two such children have taken up residence with Peter on a semi-permanent basis: Messy Mary (Liz Schachterle), who delights Peter by pulling gobs of boogers from her nose and gobbling them up; and Crybaby (Tara Leoper), who's wont to literally cry her eyes out. The Brunhilde of the brood is their mother, performed in basso frustrato by Keith Lester.
Strumply Peter was co-written by Sommers and Josef Evans — a local playwright with a taste for subversive humor. The music was composed by Eric Jensen, a theater composer who worked extensively with the late great Theatre de la Jeune Leune. While some dialogue is sung, the show is not through-composed and might be more precisely described as an operetta. Jensen's mischievous songs might put you in mind of an older, weirder Nightmare Before Christmas.
While there's inventive puppetry and clever dialogue here, the moment that perhaps best showcases the skill behind the show is an almost silent scene where Peter, Mary, and Crybaby stick their used chewing gum to the legs of a table. They take such panting glee in the act of naughtiness that by the time the deed is done, you feel like you've witnessed a descent to very depths of depravity. Isn't that how it felt when you were a kid?
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