The poet Philip Larkin once said he was relieved to discover, upon growing up, that it was children he'd despised all his life, not humanity in general. The young heroine of this new children's musical, based on a novel by Eleanor Estes, might very well agree. Wanda Petronski (Lauren Patten) is the new girl at a school where the other kids laugh at her Polish accent, unfamiliar last name, and, most of all, the fact that she wears the same drab dress day in and day out. Sean Graney's colorful, relentlessly lively production for Chicago Children's Theatre doesn't entirely avoid the shrill cutesy-wootsyism that infects much of kids' entertainment these days, but G. Riley Mills's book admirably avoids easy answers while Ralph Covert's score is lovely and challenging. --Zac Thompson
Reviews/comments (0)