When the Grimm Brothers Became Funny

Even though it is extremely difficult to make a well-known story any more new, Spencer Leopold-Cohen managed to spice up the fairy-tale, “Magic Table, the Gold Donkey and the Cudgel in a Sack,” originally written by the Grimm brothers, and make it into an amusing performance. Adding a reader to the play was an unusual twist that intensified comical situations and spoke out a modern view on the old tale.

The cause of the initial conflict in the story (and the most hilarious character) is a goat (Spencer Leopold-Cohen) that lies to his mistress (Noelle Fair). The ungrateful animal complains that the woman’s three children didn’t feed it well, which drives the mother to banish her offspring from her sight. In the meantime, the goat is full and happy after it picked up “fresh and tasty grass” from an audience members’ hair.

A huge animal with lively and devoted face expression, the goat definitely steals the show. Its awkward movements and funny looks make the audience burst with laughter and secure its place in the viewers’ hearts no matter how vicious it later turns out to be.

From that point, the story usually goes as: the children go out to the world, get jobs, do their work well and each receives a magical object as a reward for his or her labor. Unfortunately, all of them stay in the same inn on the way home, and a greedy landlord (Alex Castleton) robs them of their precious property. At the end, thanks to the third daughter’s magical cudgel, the valuables are returned and everyone is happy.

Unlike the actors of many other plays of the first annual Midwinter Madness Short Play Festival, the crew of “Magic Table…” comes out in colorful costumes that transfer the audience back in time. The mother is plump and short, with rosy cheeks, full of energy and confidence, a typical peasant woman from fairy-tales who is usually hard-working, lively and cooks well. Going along with her short temper, she stays alone and longs for her children. Her kids are not tall either. They dressed in a simple way, but everything looks put together. As for the goat, it wears a long gray costume and has a funny nose.

Even though costumes say a little bit about the characters, facial expressions play a bigger role in that. Again, the crew does their job well here. Every emotion shows up on their faces: happiness of the family reunited, “gold donkey’s” delight in the scene when he produces gold coins out of his rear end and greed on the landlord’s face when he imagines how much money he can make with the magical objects his customers have.

On the contrary to old-fashioned costumes and variety of emotions of other characters, the narrator (Harris Diano) is dressed formally in a suit, and he is calm and critical. The “reader” questions the aspects of the story that seem odd to him, for instance, “why did all the children stay in the same inn?” A rational conclusion is that there is no other one, or this is the closest, and that’s what the narrator tells us, from his point of view of a modern man who still loves fairy-tales. He also interacts with the audience more than others, but it gets awkward at the moment when he makes the viewers be the guests and relatives of the mother and repeat what he says.

Except for this, there is nothing unlikeable about the play. It is brilliantly directed, hysterically funny and ends on a happy note with the villain punished and honest laborers rewarded for their toil. And well, the old story goes on living in a new interpretation, so what can be better than that?