In a faraway kingdom, an ogre shows up to rescue a feisty princess. Throw in a donkey who won’t shut up, a bad guy with a short temper, a cookie with an attitude and over a dozen other fairy tale misfits and that’s “Shrek The Musical.”
Starr’s Mill has assembled a cast of 50 student actors, singers, musicians, and dancers, some making their stage deput in the show.
The show is for all ages, kids to adults. said director David Spearman, “The show is really fun for the whole family. There is humor for the adults and magic for the kids in the show that will be really exciting. We pulled out all the stops.”
Something people might not expect is a huge dragon puppet that takes five people to operate. The puppet will stand more than 11 feet tall on its hind legs. The dragon was created to look as much like the origin al film character as possible. Voicing the dragon will be junior, Abigail Feltner.
Starring as Shrek is senior Ethan Hatcher. Taylor Rowell, brings to life the wise-cracking Donkey. Jonah Wagner plays height-impaired Lord Farquaad and Camille Edwards, who played Hope Cladwell in last year’s award winning musical Urinetown, plays feisty Princess Fiona.
The larger-than-life wise-cracking ogre, and all his fractured fairy tale friends are coming to Fayetteville when Starr’s Mill High School Fine Arts Department debuts the premiere of the Tony-winning “Shrek The Musical” for four performances in the Willie Duke Auditorium at Starr’s Mill High School.
Tickets are $8 for students and $12 for adults to keep the show affordable for families. Tickets are available at the school’s front office.
Shows are at 7 p.m. Nov. 13, 14, and 16 and 2 p.m. Nov. 17 at Starr’s Mill High School, 193 Panther Path, Fayetteville, GA.
For information, go to http://www.starrsmillproductions.com or call 770-486-2710.
The musical which ran on Broadway from 2008 to 2011 and was nominated for 9 Tonys faithfully recreates Dreamwork’s 2001 blockbuster “Shrek” on stage with the addition of humorous songs by the Tony-nominated composer Jeanine Tesori, whose cast recording of the show was nominated for a Grammy for best musical show album.
Licensing for the show has been recently released for community theaters and Starr’s Mill will be staging the first area production of the familiar tale.
The movie “Shrek” based on William Steig’s 1990 book “Shrek!” was a huge hit for Dreamworks, and won the Oscar for animated film in 2002. The unforgettable characters including the cantankerous green ogre voiced by Mike Myers and Donkey voiced by Eddie Murphy became a part of pop culture. The movie spawned four sequel movies, television shows and now a musical and is a hugely successful franchise.
The musical features clever and catchy tunes including “Freak Flag,” and “What’s Up, Duloc?;” which were performed by the Broadway cast on the Tony Awards and “Big, Bright Beautiful World,” “I Know It’s Today,” Donkey’s hilarious “Don’t Let Me Go,”and “I’m a Believer,” the only song from the film.
For theater buffs, the show features in-jokes about the theater. Look for references to “Lion King” “Gypsy,” “Les Miserables,” “A Chorus Line” and even “West Side Story.”
