Most of us know the basic story of Sleeping Beauty: It’s a fairy tale about a princess cursed by an evil fairy to hurt herself on a spinning wheel, sleeping for 100 years before being awakened by a handsome prince.
But can she be awakened if the story doesn’t include a prince? Dale O’Dell and Sydney Marcia encourage you to see “Prince Street Players Sleeping Beauty” at Mankato Playhouse to find out.
This being a fairy tale — and not a dystopian one, at that — there is likely to be a happy ending. Though how you get to that happy ending is where the fun is found.
“I’ve actually never had a leading role like this where I was the main named lady,” said Marcia, 19, the Mankato native who will be entering her senior year in the Minnesota State University theater program. “So, I was super excited to have this opportunity through the playhouse and also through Dale.”
Although a fairly recent Mankato transplant, O’Dell, the director, has made a quick splash on Mankato stages.
At Mankato Playhouse he was the dentist in last year’s “Little Shop of Horrors,” then this summer he played Delmont in “The Miss Firecracker Contest” and Danny in “Grease” in MSU’s Highland Summer Theatre.
He begins the conversation with a somewhat surprising admission: “I’ll be honest, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is not my favorite fairy tale.” He quickly counters that with fond memories of playing the Prince in last year’s production of “Cinderella.”
“I still jumped at the opportunity to direct because I knew how magical ‘Cinderella’ was for the kids in the community and I wanted to be a part of that again,” he added, saving the possibility for this conversation to end happily ever after.
One of those bits of magic for him was feeling the love and engagement coming off the audience at “Cinderella.” He loves doing shows that draw young audiences, he said, because you never know who will be inspired by the experience.
For “Sleepy Beauty,” the magic has come in other ways as well. July and August being big months for family vacations can lead to many missed rehearsals. What could be a hardship turned into a team-building exercise, he said, as other cast members stepped in to fill the role of missing players.
“I’ve never seen that before, so I’ve thanked them for that because it’s just so incredibly helpful,” he said. “That, to me, is a real cast coming together and helping each other out.”
The cast of 13 is all ages, though most fall between early teens and early 20s. It includes the fairy tale requisites — king, queen and princess (Marcia) — a minstrel and ladies in waiting. In addition, Trollarina (evil fairy who casts the spell), The Blue Faun (cursed mute character and prince substitute) plus three fairies: Phoebe, Sybil and Minerva, who provide much of the comic relief, O’Dell said.
Marcia said she and David Marlow, who plays The Blue Faun, have developed a nice friendship offstage — where he can and does talk, by the way. Cindy Rupp at the keyboard provides valuable musical direction help for O’Dell, who claims no such skills. And Stephanie Johnston has been taking a paint brush to the backdrop she created for “Into the Woods,” transforming it into the magical woods needed for this show.
But, how about that kiss that’s supposed to be planted on Sleeping Beauty by the absent prince?
“I guess it’s a little bit of a mystery how Sleeping Beauty will awaken,” O’Dell said with a twinkle in his eye.