Pa. Playhouse works its magic on 'Cinderella'

By Kathy Lauer-Williams

Of The Morning Call

August 9, 2007

Fun and frothy, Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical ''Cinderella'' fills the Pennsylvania Playhouse with lots of pageantry and the sweeping tunes penned by the famous duo in 1957 for Julie Andrews in the title role.

As light and airy as cotton candy, the show is filled with sumptuous costumes and fanciful backdrops made to look like a child's coloring book.

As the title character, winsome Chrissy McHugh imbues both sides of the role -- the serving girl and magically transformed princess -- with an innocence and sense of wonder without seeming too much like a doormat. And her classically trained voice is a delight on the lilting ballad ''In My Own Little Corner.''

In the usually thankless role of Prince Charming, Adam Soniak is youthful and yearning and lends his strong tenor voice to his duets with McHugh on some of the best known tunes from the show, ''Ten Minutes Ago,'' and ''Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?''

Providing the show's comic relief, Elizabeth Marsh and Nikki Seng avoid making the role of the stepsisters Joy and Portia into buffoons. Wearing matching corkscrew curls, they play the sisters as self-involved and clueless rather than evil.

Wendy Borst is a fun and mysterious Godmother, and instead of just waving a wand, makes Cinderella's transformation into a princess a result of the magic of her own imagination.

As the long-suffering king, Bill Thobaben is a hoot trying to make everyone happy while unsuccessfully trying to close the waist on his trousers. Monique Haney is regal as the queen and wears an assortment of fancy dresses with intricate back detail.

Using a 10-foot-high book as a backdrop enhances the fairy-tale feel of the show. Pages feature drawings of the town, Cinderella's home, the pumpkin coach and the ballroom and are flipped back and forth as scenes change.

The transformation of Cinderella's coach and footmen is left mostly to the imagination with a quartet of actors dressed as mice swiftly donning horse masks and Cinderella settling into a seat set behind the coach drawn in the picture book, before appearing at the palace in a white gown.

''Cinderella,'' 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 6 p.m. Sunday, through Aug. 19, Pennsylvania Playhouse, Illick's Mill Road, Bethlehem. Tickets: $18; $15, seniors and students. 610-865-6665, http://www.paplayhouse.org .

kathy.lauer@mcall.com