NOTE: “Today” and “tonight” refer to Friday, Dec. 5.
PORT TOWNSEND — This story is not what you think, Cinderella says.
The young woman, also known as Sadie Palatnick, is the earnest storyteller at Key City Public Theatre, where she is surrounded by a wicked stepfamily and a charming prince.
And hang on to your slippers, because “Cinderella,” as it unfolds at the Key City Playhouse starting tonight, is both a tale of forgiveness and a frolic far from the Disney tradition.
Palatnick’s Cinderella is thrust into the circumstances many of us know all too well. She has an overbearing stepparent, Philomena (Lawrason Driscoll) and two less-than-enthused stepsisters, Gertrude and Eunice (Kenn Mann and Denise Winter). So yes, there’s a twist: Two out of three are men.
One night, Cinderella gets to go to a ball, where she dances with Prince Adric (Danny Willis), and it becomes one of the transcendent moments.
“I get to do a big waltz during the ballroom scene. That’s really fun,” said Sadie, 16.
She moved to Port Townsend about a year ago from Eugene, Ore., so “Cinderella” is her first major theater role here. The mix of actors around her, Sadie feels, is magic.
Driscoll is likewise reveling in his first role as a female — something he never expected to be doing at age 68.
“I had this vision that as I got older, I would play more dignified people,” said the actor.
Driscoll did have the title role in Shakespeare’s “King Lear” at the Key City Playhouse last spring. On that show’s opening night, Winter buttonholed him and said: “You must play the wicked stepmother.”
“Of course, I said yes. I was delirious,” Driscoll recalled.
Stepmother Philomena, according to Driscoll, is not only wicked but also sympathetic.
“She’s just a single mom trying to raise these girls as best she can,” he says.
As for the sisters, Mann and Winter, “They’re incredible clowns,” not unlike the Three Stooges. And Sadie, she didn’t smile at all at first. When she did, though, “she lights up like a Christmas tree.”
While this play is not a traditional musical, it does have plenty of song. An ensemble of 11 singers including head caroler Amy Dahlberg, who also portrays the Fairy Godmother, weave their music in to the story. They also get to come to the ball as courtiers.
Director Duncan Frost believes this “Cinderella,” with its wacky family, gender-bending and lavish ballroom scene, holds on to its old-fashioned heart.
“A lot of magic happens for [Cinderella] over the course of a few days. And no matter how her family tries to keep her down, the more she decides to be kind,” he said.
“It’s very much an entertainment. But I hope the takeaway is that the choice to be kind is, in itself, a very strong action.”
That choice can open the door for transformation, added Driscoll. For him, “Cinderella” is a story of “rebirth, and a new beginning . . . what we think about at Christmas.”
