Witchapalooza
a play by Kamron Kiltgaard
Breakthrough Theatre Company • Winter Park, Florida
by Carl F. Gauze
Hmm… a play about witches, and we are about as far from Halloween as you can get in the Julian calendar. There’s a witches coven meeting tonight. The Annual Witches of the Coven Conference meets, and they are hoping to capture some small children for dinner. And be clear on this plot point: the kids ARE the dinner. Helga (Sally Green) seems to be the alpha witch. She recommends pig’s vomit as a beauty tip for keeping your weight down as you will not be tempted to bite your nails. I don’t make this stuff up, I just report it.
The other witches all have quirks, as well. One has a fingernail fetish, another teaches how spells must always rhyme to work, and a third tells bad jokes. They lure small children Hansel (Camilo Melendez) and Gretel (Melina Rodrigues) to their lair for a ritual murder, but the kids defend themselves by bouncing off the walls, eating candy and speaking faux German. There’s even a token male witch Sabrina (Ryan M. Stiner) and while witching is an ancient female profession, today’s male witches are finally receiving the attention they deserve.
The small, bouncy kids are supposedly under the care of Jack (Fransiscus Fendrian), but they have the run of the forest. Jack mastered slipping in and out of poorly-tied ropes, and when Scarlet (Hadley Williams) appears, she is a a bit fastidious and doesn’t want to eat the small children. It’s a witching issue similar to veganism for normal humans. In order to wrap up this spiritual conundrum, the witch team invents Trick or Treat and use the collected candy to defeat the diabetic witches. That may sound harsh, but if you read the old German folk tales, you know cannibalism is the least of the threats to children.
Why is this on the Breakthrough stage? It’s summer, they need more kids shows, and the twisted fairy tale angle is not an unreasonable diversion. It’s not a serious drama, and you get your get candy. I ate mine and am here to write about it, so you are probably safe.
