FAIRY TALES REVIEW -- Best Production Orlando International Fringe Festival

By Elizabeth Maupin | Sentinel Theater Critic
Posted May 15, 2002, 3:01 PM EDT

Fairy Tales, what took you so long?

Eric Lane Barnes' 1995 musical revue is a natural for any town with an enthusiastic theater audience and a bustling gay community. At the Orlando International Fringe Festival, the combination of Barnes' buoyant songs and a jubilant staging by Orlando's Chataqua Productions makes for a show people are practically beating down the doors to see.

A loose cycle of songs that relate both to being gay and to being human, Fairy Tales combines the expected and the unexpected: the songs about looking for love and about telling Dad, along with the more surprising ones about one man's ambition, another man's cultural icons and the girl who got away. Barnes is clever with a lyric (rhyming "hate 'em" and "verbatim") and he has a gift for matching a political message with such catchy, celebratory music that the message becomes acceptable and safe.

In Orlando, the show gets expert handling from director Greg Triggs, choreographer T. Robert Pigott and especially musical director Jason Wetzel, whose piano accompaniment is a driving force. And the casting is superb - five versatile actors who make this show swing. Jennifer Bascom, Jim Howard, Desta Sheridan and Scott Weyrauch all have plenty of moments, but it's Layden Sadecky who waltzes away with the show with his citified cowboy, his love for the Partridge Family and his desire to be a presidential spouse. Sadecky brings a light touch both to the comedy and to the show's closing drama, and he makes Fairy Tales soar.