Winnie the Pooh is warm as a bear with a hot cup of tea and honey in the bathtub.
The 45-minute show opened Friday night at the Arkansas Arts Center Children's Theatre in Little Rock. A musical based on English author A.A. Milne's 1926 classic of the same title, it follows the eminent teddy bear and his friends through a day of comic misadventures.
But this version is a bit "different," as cast member John Isner explained after the performance to Friday night's audience of youngsters and parents. Directed by Bradley Anderson, it comes off as a happy go at experimental theater for kindergartners.
Isner plays the Narrator, but as he says, "not really the narrator." Instead, he does the work of the busiest cartoon voice actor since Mel Blanc, speaking the lines of a half-dozen costumed animal characters.
They can't talk for themselves in head-to-toe costumes by Erin Larkin, like a crew of big-headed amusement park characters. But each one conveys through movement the personality of these beloved figures.
Pooh (Aleigha Morton), his piggy pal Piglet (Margaret Lowry) and Rabbit (Jeremy Matthey) solve the mystery of what kind of animal bounces around with her baby. Who else but Kanga (Geoffrey Eggleston) and Roo (Grace Taylor)?
Owl (Rebecca Taylor) joins in, too, in a bumbling effort to cheer up the dour donkey Eeyore (Kenneth Barron).
Isner appears to sip tea off to the side like a cozy Mr. Rogers in a 100-acre neighborhood, all the while delivering the whole script as adapted for the stage by Le Clanche Du Rand. Hamlet would have wheezed at such a soliloquy, but Isner makes it look like fun.
As the show finds its rhythm, the characters seem to take on voices of their own, the same as Jeff Dunham's ventriloquist puppets and Kermit the Frog come alive.
And of course, there's a red balloon in this show -- because in the wise words of the Pooh Bear: "Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon."
Winnie the Pooh continues through Nov. 13. More information is available at arkansasartscenter.org,or by calling (501) 372-4000.
Metro on 10/29/2016