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WHERE'S Danny Kaye when you need him?
His ingratiating presence was sorely missed during "My Life as a Fairy Tale," a new music theater work based on the life and writings of Hans Christian Andersen.
The sort of pretentious, free-associative, avant-garde piece commissioned and presented by arts festivals like this one, "Fairy Tale" manages to suck the life out of such classic stories as "The Little Mermaid."
A plethora of talent has been assembled for the production, including stars Fiona Shaw (last seen on our shores hacking her children to death in "Medea"), Blair Brown, and Mia Maestro (TV's "Alias"); director/conceiver Chen Shi Zheng, delivering his fourth Lincoln Center Festival production in six years; and composer Stephen Merritt, best known as the leader of the Magnetic Fields.
Unfortunately, the results are largely incoherent and devoid of visual or emotional impact. A collage of snippets taken from Andersen's fairy tales, stories and writings, Erik Ehn's libretto aims to convey the essence of the author's life through deceptively subversive literary artistry.
But from its cutesy opening, with Shaw (as Andersen) sheepishly walking onstage clutching a rubber ducky before uttering the iconic words "Once upon a time," to its sardonic take on various fairy tales (the Little Mermaid takes a chainsaw to her flipper) and climactic image of a giant inflatable orb representing the moon, the work sacrifices depth for cheap irony and theatrical cliches.
The performers struggle gamely with the material: Shaw, looking vaguely embarrassed, lends her cross-dressing role some interesting shadings; Brown, Qian Yi and Mary Lou Rosato provide colorful support in a variety of roles, and the beautiful Maestro well embodies several fairy-tale characters.
Merritt's score, performed on such instruments as accordion, electric pipa, bassoon and Stroh violin, is reasonably tuneful in an exotic, music hall sort of way.
Ultimately, though, this is one fairy tale that doesn't have a happy ending.
MY LIFE AS A FAIRY TALE Lincoln Center Festival at Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, 10th Avenue between 58th and 59th streets; (212) 721-6500. Through tomorrow.
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