What's the Secret in: The Secret in the Wings

Performance Title: The Secret in the Wings

Theater Name/Location: SAS Riady Drama Theatre  

Date reviewed: Oct 6                              

Written by: Mary Zimmerman

Directed by: Tom Schulz                                         

Number of Stars: 3

The Secret in the Wings starts off with a twist of Beauty and the Beast where a dad steals a rose and gives it to his wife. As punishment, the daughter is being babysitted by an ogre longer than expected for her parents don’t come back. The ogre tells several unpopular fairy tales during that period.

Fairy tales mixed into one may sound interesting, but it's actually confusing.

The stories are split into two parts. The first half will be played then interrupted by another story’s part and so on till the second part comes out again. You would have no idea why one story just paused suddenly and a new story came up. Was it necessary? Some characters I didn't even know why they were there. For example, that ghost that kept on screaming time to time. Which story did she come from? Did her scream represent something? Furthermore, I didn't get why some lines were included or what they were saying. I didn't know why the ogre was asking the girl to marry him countless times. Turns out it was representing the Beast who asked Bell to marry him. Another example are the three princes. They have a theme of ending each other’s sentences, and that made it really difficult to catch what they were saying when someone interrupted the speaker repeatedly in addition to talking fast.

The actors their self-were amazing though. Their makeup were on point. For example, the three queens had painted tears underneath their eyes which helped show that they were blind, as well as sympathy and sadness for the character. Another example is Allerleira who had red circles on her cheek. This was meant to represent her beauty of rosy cheeks. The actors also helped enhance the performance by singing themselves or snapping their fingers. Most importantly the actors were brave when acting. There were shocking moments when one of the girls lifted up their dress to expose her underwear. I would have been so embarrassed, but she still kept up with her character trait without showing her embarrassment.

Taking in consideration of all the details, I think this performance is suited for older people. The word choices are difficult and fast for children to understand, but older people will know most of the definitions and those hidden secrets that you are suppose to catch throughout the story.  I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone for you should be able to understand the performance but I was not able to.

Words: 448