Fitting for a Shakespeare Santa Cruz production, it's full of witty and crafty language. And though it's only in verse when the fairy godmother is onstage, the prose lays down a steady beat. Like a masterful drummer, Hawley throws things off-kilter for surprises and hits zingers head on. Laughs are both ribald and sublime, striking a taut balance between youthful silliness and mature complexity and irony. The songs are constructed with equal precision.
Musical numbers are catchy, studied in harmony and structure and flawlessly orchestrated.
WITH SUCH a first-rate show, actors have only to hit their marks and hand out lines with some aplomb. But the cast of Shakespeare Santa Cruz veterans and a handful of extremely talented student actors goes all out. Farthest out has to be Joseph Ribeiro. She attends the royal ball done up like an ornate oriental dominatrix with brassy red hair coifed into three stacked bulbs and generally vamps as hard as any character in musical theater since Gypsy . Any listing of outstanding players would be incomplete without Mike Ryan.