‘Princess Frog’ at Long Island Children’s Museum
Actor Kieran Quinn Kerekes of Hempstead as Prince Tre and actress and playwright Lena Pennino-Smith of West Babylon star with Rana the frog in "The Princess Frog: A Musical Fairy Tale," at Long Island Children's Museum in Garden City. Credit: Marisol Diaz
The true-love kiss didn’t work.
Prince Tre had been sure that the Princess Frog would turn into a human princess when he gave her the big smooch. But nothing happened. He was devastated. Now what? Could he — would he — marry an amphibian?
That’s the riveting — or ribbeting — question in a new family musical commissioned by the Long Island Children’s Museum in Garden City, the first time the museum has sponsored the creation of an original stage show.
“Princess Frog: A Musical Fairy Tale” complements the museum’s current temporary gallery, called “Once Upon a Time: Exploring the World of Fairy Tales,” and will be performed 14 times in the museum’s 144-seat theater from Nov. 21 to Dec. 31.
“We thought this would be a great way to tie the theater into the gallery and the gallery into the theater,” says Maureen Mangan, museum director of communications. “We picked the dates we picked — the week before Thanksgiving and the week between Christmas and New Year’s — because multiple generations will be together and can come to the show.”
The one-hour play and its more than half-dozen original songs were written by Lena Pennino-Smith of West Babylon, who also operates the talking frog princess puppet, named Rana, the Italian word for frog.
The story is a modern retelling of an Italian folk tale called “The Prince Who Married a Frog.” The performance includes a variety of shadow puppetry, live musicians and catchy numbers such as a duet between the human Queen and Prince Tre, in which Tre laments, “I like humans, I like hair, teeth and nails and stuff,” and the Queen admits, “I hate frogs; frogs are gross.”
The human cast also includes Tre’s two older princely brothers and their fiancees, who compete with Tre and his “frog-ancee” in a reality TV-show style competition to see which couple should be heirs to the throne. Things come to a head when the Queen, scheming to find a challenge the frog can’t possibly win, declares the final competition to be a beauty contest and the Princess Frog doesn’t stand a chance.
“It’s very smartly written,” says Kieran Quinn Kerekes, 26, of Hempstead, who plays Prince Tre, the youngest brother. Kerekes says he was “jumping” — excuse the pun — at the chance to play his role.
The museum is providing an online, downloadable, free activity packet to accompany the play. Like many fairy tales, the story has a moral.
What is it?
Kerekes won’t say, but he did promise this: “You have a message on top of a very fun script.”
‘Once Upon a Time’ fairy-tale fun
Jessie Celestin, 8, a third-grader in the Oceanside School District, stuck her hand through a cloth barrier and into a box at the Long Island Children’s Museum.
“It feels like a glove,” she says.
Good guess, but it’s wrong. It’s velvet.
“This one is easy! I think it’s a bracelet,” she says, sticking her hand in a second box.
Close enough — it’s a beaded necklace.
The guessing game is part of the museum’s current traveling exhibit, “Once Upon a Time: Exploring the World of Fairy Tales,” which will be at the museum through Jan. 3, and is included with museum admission.
During a school field trip, Jessie is trying to reach in and determine the gifts that Belle received from the Beast in the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast.”
The gallery looks at seven fairy tales: “Beauty and the Beast,” the Chinese fairy tale “Lon Po Po” — meaning “Granny Wolf” — the African spider story “Anansi and the Talking Melon,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Cinderella,” “Thumbelina” and “The Elves and the Shoemaker.”
“Fairy tales are the quintessential storytelling format for children,” says Erik Schurink, museum director of exhibits. And one of the goals of the gallery is to promote literacy.
Even parents may learn something they didn’t already know — for instance, that the story of Cinderella has more than 1,500 versions, with Cinderella being named Yeh-hsien in a Chinese version and Cendrillon in a French telling.
Other interactive elements of the gallery let kids hammer nails into the soles of shoes as part of “The Elves and the Shoemaker” story, hoist a wolf in a basket up a tree as part of “Lon Po Po,” don a dress to ride in a pumpkin coach like Cinderella, and more.
“You really do step into the stories,” says Maureen Mangan, museum director of communications. “If you can inspire a child to want to read, they’ll read for the rest of their lives.”
Kids also have a chance to “write” their own fairy tale at the exhibit, by filling in the blanks in a computer template they can then print out to take home.
Priscilla Abadia, 8, a classmate of Jessie’s, chooses a troll as her main character “because it looks funny,” she says. He falls in a “river” and is rescued by a “woodsman” who uses a “fishing pole” to yank him out.
WHAT “Princess Frog: A Musical Fairy Tale”
WHEN | WHERE Nov. 21 and 22 and Dec. 27 through 31 at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the Long Island Children’s Museum, 11 Davis Ave., Garden City
COST $9 with museum admission of $13 for adults and children older than 1; $12 for seniors 65 and older, free for children younger than 1; $12 theater only
INFO 516-224-5800; licm.org
Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.
