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Little House on the Parody

nytheatre.com review by Christopher Moore
August 15, 2005

Little House on the Parody is a musical sendup of the values and situations portrayed in the television series Little House on The Prairie and the series of books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder about her days on the frontier. The innocence and purity of pioneer life and the biblical scale of the constant calamities that befall the residents of Walnut Grove seem an easy target for parody. But if making fun of the world is like shooting fish in a barrel, after watching this show, it became evident that sometimes the fish shoot back. While the show knowingly laughs at the ideals espoused in the television program with an insider’s precision, at the same time it endeavors to embrace the very values it mocks. This creates a mixed tone that muddies the overall pitch of the production, and mutes the comedy.There is not much plot to this play. It is a loosely-woven collage of scenes lampooning the most memorable episodes of the television series. Orphans, blizzards, fire, famine, blindness, drug addiction are all here! Writers Becky Eldridge and Amy Petersen skewer the melodramatic components of the series, and their script has some clever turns. When Pa Ingalls returns form a blizzard and remarks that he was blinded by the snow, his daughter Mary naively says “Blind! I can’t imagine what that would be like.” Anyone who knows the television program knows what fate holds for Mary, and appreciates the wit with which multiple television episodes have been woven together for comic effect.However, these moments are not in the majority, and the focus of the play seems to wander aimlessly. Anachronisms abound in this production, but not always with positive results; for example, the spinster school teacher has a musical number that incorporates hip-hop and writhing. Still, the performers do a remarkable job of infusing the performance with infectious joy and high energy. Standouts in a uniformly fine cast include the dynamic Pat Shay as Pa Ingalls. Donning Michael Landon hair, Shay is adept at portraying Landon’s sunny disposition without sacrificing the comic spirit of the parody. Ed Jones is unforgettable as Harriet Oleson. Amy Starks’s Mary and Lis Dunson’s Ma Ingalls also delight. As orphan Albert, Paul Luikart is both hilarious and likeable. Andy Eninger’s direction is imaginative and worthy of special attention. The staging is sharp, and putting a blizzard and plague of locusts on-stage cannot be easy. Credit should also be given to the wig and costume team, who go unmentioned in the program. Their contributions are invaluable.Ultimately, the individual contributions go a long way toward making this production fly when it does, but in the end, the lack of cohesion among the episodes is jarring and the final embrace of the virtues put forward by the play is unconvincing. That said, there are laughs in this production and anyone who knows Walnut Grove will certainly enjoy this show.