'Frog Princess' - Dressed for hexes

As delightful as the actresses and actors are in "The Frog Princess," opening tonight at the Rose Theatre, the costumes and makeup deserve equal billing.

For this children's play adapted from a Russian fairy tale, Southeast faculty member Rhonda Weller-Stilson has turned pretty Janel Mason into Baba Yaga, a frighteningly Nora-Desmondish witch clothed in a gown out of "Sunset Boulevard." "No one, nowhere, no how tells Baba Yaga what to do!" Baba screams.

Elizabeth Goodman is the beautiful Irina Baranova one minute and, after Baba put a spell on her, a bug-eyed, web-footed frog the next. The costume student DeLyle Robbins designed is made froggier by a thigh-thickening prosthetic.

The robe worn by wizard Koussevitsky (Mike Culbertson) is painted with mystical-looking symbols big enough to show up from 30 feet. The Tsarina Maria Ouspenskya is a royally robed vision played by Gelanie Lockhart. The rest of the costumes are a potpourri of styles in Mardi Gras colors of purple and green that dazzle on stage.

This is a story about a princess who is turned into a frog by a wicked witch. She is doomed to live out her life in a swamp unless rescued by a prince. Boris Bootskinsky (Regina Hagen), also known in the play by the nickname Puss In Boots, is enslaved by the witch as well.

Mason is delicious in the role of Baba Yaga, wheeling about the stage on her broomstick, admiring herself -- "Oh Baba, you knobby-legged wonder" -- and sentencing Irina to a life as "a frog on a log in a bog."

Director Dennis C. Seyer has established a tradition of mounting a spring children's play at Southeast, and this collaboration with writer Don Garner has the charm of past productions such as "Rumplestiltskin" and "Puss In Boots." The characters are fancifully named -- Tatiana Tagalongalot (Autumn Dunivan) and Natalia Notalongalot (Crystal Meaux) -- and some references are aimed at adults as well as children.

"Mom always liked him best," the princes Pushkin (Keith Winston) and Vladimir (Tim Nicolai) complain about their heroic brother Dmitri Shostakovich. The reference is to an old Smothers Brothers joke. More fun is simply provided by the jealous princes' body language.

Meagan Edmonds, Ann-Marie Martina and Dan Graul are engaging as clowns who entertain the audience between scene changes by asking questions and reiterating what has occurred.

The lighting design and technical direction is by D. Kenneth Cole. Edmonds is the assistant director. The stage manager is Alex Seiler.

Seyer acknowledges the importance of costumers in a children's theater production.

"As soon as they put the costume on, it redefines the character for them," he says of the actors. "The thing they have been working toward comes full cycle."

Actors and actresses in a children's play must believe in their characters, he says. "You have to take it seriously or children tap into it."

But Seyer gives his players two admonitions before they begin each rehearsal: "Have fun with it and have more fun with it."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182