Enthusiastic and engaging play all the way

CHENNAI: When you retell one of the most popular of evergreen fairytales- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, you know people don't come to watch it for the story. It is the handling of the classic that matters, and on Sunday, Wonder Years' play school's version of the classic proved just that.The play stuck fairly closely to the classic fairytale, the only significant changes being swapping the original huntsman for a mad scientist and granting the evil queen a reprieve. It kicked off with the mad scientist (gleefully played by Chirag) revealing that he is in posses ion of a time-traveling potion. Sure enough he winds up time-traveling right in the presence of the evil queen and gets tasked with killing Snow White. The rest is straightforward fairytale fare, mad scientist can't bring himself to killer her, she runs off and finds the elves, the elves all take a liking to her, the queenpoisons her and, finally, the Prince saves the day.An important highlight of the play was its frenetic pace and the energy of its cast, which was astonishing. Technical snags in the sound system during the entry of the prince made swathes of dialogue incomprehensible. But this hardly detracted from the panache that characterised the entire production. There were a few surreal moments, such as when Snow White proclaimed, without a hint of irony, and whilst looking up at a six foot four elf 'oh look you are little people'.  Interestingly, when the lovely Snow White (played by Arunditti) went out to collect pennies from the audience, in return for granting their wishes, such was the stampede of children towards her that is one was momentarily unsure if the heroine would make it back on stage. Thankfully, she returned quick and the play continued. Wonder Years playschool is an organisation devoted to helping children aged 1-5. The play 'Snow White and the Eleven Naughty Elves' was the school's attempt to expose more children to the creative arts.Despite minor glitches, Snow White and the Eleven Naughty Elves did exactly what it promised, it was unstoppably enthusiastic and engaged the young audience at every opportunity. Everyone left satisfied, even the evil queen who, despite her earlier nefarious activities, got an invite to Snow Whites wedding.”