Close your eyes and try to conceive, the most outrageous story to ever be believed! If you can just believe, it’s beautifully bizarre, a story about a boy— and a giant peach, and that’s just the way things are! Right before your eyes— James and The Giant Peach is now appearing on stage at The Heritage Players as their summer engagement. Directed by Elizabeth Tane Kanner with Musical Direction by Emily Taylor &
Tale as old as time. Executing a Disney stage musical is always a tricky endeavor because one is competing with decades of iconic memories perfected and preserved in flawless animation. Even the best of the Disney stage shows suffer from the same stock problems: primarily easy to animate but difficult to stage scenes, added music significantly less stellar than the original scores, and inflated books from stretching the perfectly tailored 97-minute movie to two and a half hours of stage time.
A genuine princess is exceedingly rare. A genuine fairytale is exceptionally brilliant. Having both together on one stage for a musical is nothing short of a miracle. The Saint Gabriel Miracle Players have found such a miracle with the tremendously talented cast and design team of their current production of Once Upon a Mattress. A rare treat to have such a silly story told with such stellar vocal quality; the music and lyrics of Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer come to whimsical fruition against Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller’s book— there’s a happily ever after waiting for theatergoers who enjoy sparkling singers and gorgeous costumes.