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Little Theatre To Stage ‘Rapunzel: Beginnings And Beyond’

The Lucille Ball Little Theatre will open its production of “Rapunzel: Beginnings and Beyond” at 7:30 p.m. today. Additional performances will be staged at the Little Theatre at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday; Friday, March 31; and Saturday, April 1. There will be 2 p.m. matinee performances on Sunday and Sunday, April 2. Submitted photo by Holly Weston

The Lucille Ball Little Theatre will present a familiar tale with several twists when it stages its upcoming production of “Rapunzel: Beginnings and Beyond” over the next two weekends.

For the past month, the Jamestown theater company has been hard at work putting together a stage adaptation of the Rapunzel story as it’s rarely been heard before, all while incorporating adult actors into a children’s play for the first time.

“We chose this show basically because we have never had adults doing a children’s show,” said Helen Merrill, who is co-directing the production along with Anne Eklund. “This is a rough timeslot for us because so many people have gone South and the high school musicals are going on, and so we don’t have the amount of talent available to us that would normally have at other points of the season. So this seemed like the avenue to go.

“Also, we thought young children need to be given the opportunity to attend the performing arts; so it was a good time to feature something that they would understand, that was written for their level, and have fun with it. So that’s the reason we went with this musical; we’ve never offered a family situation like this before.”

Merrill said the plot of the production more closely follows that of the fairy tale “Rapunzel” as portrayed in the collected works of the Brothers Grimm, as opposed to the more commonly known versions of the tale as seen in various modern films such as “Shrek the Third” and “Tangled.”

In this adaptation of the age-old story, Rapunzel is more than just a damsel in distress who’s long overdue for a haircut; she’s a daring and precocious little lass who is determined to solve her own problems. A garden of magical singing fruits and vegetables, a wisecracking rat, a sage cricket and a fidgety flying squirrel — who can’t fly — all help her along the way.

The production will be staged at the Little Theatre at 7:30 p.m. today; Saturday; Friday, March 31; and Saturday, April 1. There will be 2 p.m. matinee performances on Sunday and Sunday, April 2.

Tickets are $20 for general admission, as usual, but children 5 and under will be admitted for $5 and students 12 and older for $10. There will also be a special family rate of $40 for four people on opening night only.

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