WESTERLY — The Granite Theatre will bring everyone’s favorite green ogre to life this month with “Shrek the Musical,” where the ogre gets the girl and finds out friendship is so much better than solitude.
Set in a mythical “once upon a time” sort of land, “Shrek the Musical” is a wonderfully silly but lovable fairy tale that tells the story of a hulking green ogre who, after being mocked and feared his entire life by anything that crosses his path, retreats to an ugly green swamp to exist in happy isolation.
Suddenly, a gang of homeless fairy-tale characters — Pinocchio, Cinderella, the Three Pigs, and others — raid his sanctuary, saying they’ve been evicted by the vertically challenged Lord Farquaad. So Shrek strikes a deal: “I’ll get your homes back, if you give me my home back,” he tells them.
But when Shrek and Farquaad meet, the Lord strikes a deal of his own: He’ll give the fairy-tale characters their homes back, if Shrek rescues Princess Fiona. Shrek obliges, yet finds something appealing — something strange and different — about this pretty princess. He likes her. A lot … but why does she always run off when the sun sets?
The show is directed and choreographed by Erin Sousa-Stanley, the Granite’s artistic director who invites theater-lovers to “come enjoy the music and the magic our troupe of actors creates on stage and lose yourself in the possibilities of happily ever after.”
The show is musically directed by Chris Stanley and the cast is led by Jaron Wilbur as Shrek and Grace Gilbert as Fiona.
— Nancy Burns-Fusaro
