Chicago Reader: The gracefulness and power of circus lends itself well to fables and superhero tales, so when Little Red was announced as the annually anticipated Winter Circus at the Actors Gymnasium, I knew the presentation was likely to be epic, in the fairy-tale sense and the circus sense.
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Fairytales lend themselves really well to theatre! Just like how people in ancient Greece would have gone to plays already familiar with the characters and their stories (Oedipus, for example, starts in media res and assumes the audience already has some context for the story), most people are already familiar with stories like little re riding hood. This allows the creative team to save a lot of time worldbuilding and skip straight to the action—it’s what allows Into the Woods to move at the pace it does without the audience becoming confused. Because we already know Cinderella runs away from the ball, Sondheim doesn’t have to spend anytime telling us. I’m sure the same is true of Little Red as part of the Winter Circus at the Actors Gymnasium: the actors take the original plot and subvert it, as Kimberly Campbell explains, “The twist arises when Little Red and the wolf turn out to be shape-shifters that possess circus bodies to tell the tale. Each performer is in turn compelled to enact Little Red Riding Hood’s plot mostly through their circus actions .” Overall, I think this production sounds really exciting and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
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