'Cinderella' stepsisterhood is powerful

"What's the difference between a piano and a fish?" asks a character in the Children's Theatre's "Cinderella," which opened over the weekend in Minneapolis. Answer: "You can tune a piano, but you can't tune a fish."

This joke, disarming and charming because of its obviousness, is part of a wild and wacky English-style pantomime treatment of the classic fairytale. The raucous and riotous show leaves no pun behind as it gleefully mashes up comedic styles.

To say that this is not your grandmother's "Cinderella" is only partly true. On Friday, grandparents were up in the aisles having a swell time during the interactive parts. So were parents and their little ones. The entertaining production, under the cheekily nimble direction of Peter Brosius, speaks effusively to everyone.

It is as if there are two plays going on in the show, which has a live, Victor Zupanc-led orchestra playing in a pit in the middle of the small stage.

The main narrative is the story that we know about a much-abused, glass-slippered girl who gets to go to the ball and marry a prince.

The gifted Maeve Moynihan plays the title character with ladles of sugar, while Erik Pearson parades about as the handsome prince.

But their love story is a virtual sideshow in this "Cinderella," in which the antics of Cinderella's stepsisters Dorcas (Reed Sigmund) and Pearl (Dean Holt) and stepmother (Autumn Ness) get top billing.

We know this from the first moment we see the mean stepmom and her two daughters, their backs to us. All are dressed like fashion accidents, with Sigmund's pudgy, gaudy Dorcas looking like a cross between Tammy Faye Bakker and Miss Piggy.

Holt's Pearl resembles the bespectacled spawn of Pippi Longstocking and Joan Rivers. And Ness' stepmother, self-described as "mother of Pearl," is a schoolmarm with a touch of witch.

All three careen about the stage, often to a soundtrack that sounds like the bombast of intestinal juices. They engage the audience with a secret word that triggers yelling. Sigmund and Holt's daring physical antics had me worried that they would fall into the orchestra pit.

The production (beautifully designed by Eduardo Sicangco) is rife with cultural references, from show tunes to Prince to the Guthrie's "A Christmas Carol" (a group of carolers who sing between scenes get confused). One of my favorite send-ups was Sigmund's Dorcas channeling Joe Cocker in a tremulous, quavering riff on "I Am So Beautiful to Me."

The makeup, the singing, the camp of this "Cinderella" sometimes made it seem like it was too much -- that I might become sick from laughter. But then the story would pivot back to Cinderella and the prince, and I remembered the name of the show, which is a wonderful addition to the holiday offerings.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390