The Adventures of Peter Rabbit hopped to it Friday night at the Arkansas Arts Center Children's Theatre in Little Rock, with Katie Campbell in bounding motion as Peter.
Campbell is all leaps, leg twitches and even toe curls on the run from mean Mr. McGregor. But the bunny doesn't speak for himself in Keith Smith's inventive retelling of Beatrix Potter's nearly century-old rabbit tale.
Smith and director John Isner split the forest scene: To the left: a picnic outing, primly costumed as in Potter's time. The picnickers -- Samantha Harrington, Aleigha Morton, Geoffrey Eggleston and Jeremy Matthey -- sing and tell the story of Peter's naughty venture into Mr. McGregor's garden. They do all the voices.
To stage right: Peter and his family are long-eared and puffy-tailed rabbits. Furry costumes turn Jeffery Oakley into Mrs. Rabbit and Yusuf Richardson, Jordan Taylor and Madison Stolzer into Peter's sisters -- Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail. The bunnies and the farmer's cat (Margaret Lowry) enact the story. Or mostly, Peter does.
There he goes, this bad boy of the rabbit world, under the garden fence and into Mr. McGregor's dreams of rabbit pie. At this point, Eggleston leaves the picnic to assume the full, fuming role of Mr. McGregor, chasing Peter with a croquet mallet.
The grouchy gardener makes it a scary chase with some tight choreography in the hammer swings that seem barely to miss. (But as parents may remember, Peter does not lose his head, nor even his whiskers, but only his blue coat.)
Easily one of the children's theater's most active shows, Peter's story lilts along to the picnickers' harmonizing on Lori Isner's sweet and funny songs. The lyrics are as much for grown-ups as for children, as when Mrs. Rabbit laments Mr. Rabbit's sad fate in the vegetable patch:
I begged him not to go,
But he loved his parsley so.
Opening night found the cast contending with bunny tails that fell off. But Peter picked his up as neatly as a rabbit would a clover, and Cotton-tail deftly kicked hers offstage like a Tribble.
The Adventures of Peter Rabbit continues through May 8, closing out the children's theater's 2015-16 season. More information is available at arkansasartscenter.org, or by calling (501) 372-4000.
Metro on 04/23/2016