A gentle ‘Babes in Toyland’ allows Hilltown audiences to return to childhood

The Enterprise — Michael Koff

Heartfelt hug: Mistress Mary, played by Morgan Galvin, right, embraces her hero, Alan, played by Zack Loucks in the Hilltowns Players production of “Babes in Toyland.”

BERNE — Penny Shaw remembers seeing the Disney version of “Babes in Toyland” when she was a girl.

“I was a very impressionable child,” she recalled. “I couldn’t watch scary movies. They seemed so real to me; I’d have bad, bad dreams.”

But she loved “Babes in Toyland. “Annette Funicello was so pretty. I remember all the nursery-rhyme characters and the toys coming to life. I was in awe. It was so cool.”

A founding member of the Hilltowns Players, Shaw decided to bring “Babes in Toyland” to the Berne-Knox-Westerlo stage this Christmas season.

As the director and also the choreographer, Shaw has made sure there is nothing in the production that would cause bad dreams for any child who comes to see it.

For example, when the heroine has to make her way through a forest with spiders to get to Toyland, she is attacked by the spiderettes.

“She’s supposed to take a hatchet and kill them,” said Shaw, with horror in her voice.

Not under Shaw’s watch.

Instead, she altered the script so that Mistress Mary carries essentials in a suitcase. “A girl should never leave home without bug spray and sunscreen,” says Mistress Mary.

After the spiderettes are sprayed, they scamper away.

Mission accomplished — and no nightmares will follow.

The Enterprise — Michael Koff

Puckering up, the evil Barnaby, played by Vasilios Lefkaditis, thinks he is about to kiss Mistress Mary, but it is, instead, the Widow Piper, played by Wendy Shelburne.


The villainous and miserly Barnaby wants to do away with Alan, and marry Mistress Mary. Barnaby is played by Vasilios Lefkaditis, the supervisor-elect for the town of Knox. “Every time he auditions, he says he just wants to play the bad guy,” said Shaw.

Barnabay has two sidekicks, Gonzorgo and Rodrigo — “the goons are buffoons,” said Shaw, describing them as “the bad guys you love to hate.”

The goons are played by Kristen Norray, a junior at Berne-Knox-Westerlo, and by Anna Lefkaditis, who is married to Vasilios. Their children, following a family tradition, have roles in the play, too.

Anna Lefkaditis and Kristen Norray were also paired in the Hilltowns Players’ production last year, “When in Rome” — Lefkaditis played a princess and Norray was her servant.

In “Toyland,” Shaw said, the duo is “really funny.”

The Enterprise — Michael Koff

Clutching her little lamb, Mary, played by Kiki Lefkaditis, smiles during the Christmas carnival, which opens “Babes in Toyland,” on the Berne-Knox-Westerlo stage this weekend. Supplying the live music from the pit are Stacey Wright on piano, Alyce Gibbs on keyboard, Gerald Irwin on bass, and BKW student Zane Valachovic playing percussion.


 

Again, Shaw used her personal life to inform the production of this number. The script had called for the elves in “beautiful girl and boyland” to hold boxes. She worried this would be difficult for the elementary-school-aged performers.

Shaw was struck with a solution when her eye fell on her grandson Joshua’s favorite stuffed toy, a jaguar, he had left at her house after a sleepover.

Shaw had the elves hold stuffed animals, instead of boxes. “Kids love stuffed toys,” said Shaw. “They can cuddle with them.”

When Shaw directs plays, she makes cameo appearances. That way, she is part of the troupe dancing in the songs she has choreographed. Her oftentimes very young players take heart in seeing her on stage.

“It gives them confidence,” she said. “They can look at me to see the steps.”

Some children are also buoyed by having a parent in the production. One such dyad in this season’s play is Lexi Malonga and her mother, Alicia. Lexi, from Greenville, got a part in the play and, since Shaw has a rule that a parent must stay at rehearsal for any child under 12, Alicia Malonga decided to make her stage debut along with her daughter; she plays the parts of a gypsy, soldier, and elf, said Shaw.

The Enterprise — Michael Koff

Bedtime ritual: A mother, played by Rhonda Doherty, reads nursery rhymes to her daughter as the little girl pleads for more.


 

When she asks where toys come from, her mother tells her, “A mystical, magical place called Toyland…All you have to do to get there is close your eyes and you’ll be there.”

Shaw concluded, “That’s the melancholy part of the Toyland song.” She sings a piece of it, “Once you leave its borders, you can never return again.”

Shaw went on, “When your childhood is gone, it’s the children that bring you back.”

What has kept Shaw at work with the Hilltowns Players for 32 years?

“I love being on stage,” she said. “I like to make people laugh or smile.”

She went on, “I always feel at least one person in the cast needs to feel like they belong to this. We’re kind of a family…It’s a confidence-builder,” she said, describing how shy or troubled children not only come to feel like they belong but also learn their worth as they are applauded by others — strangers filling the seats in the auditorium.

“On opening night, the first time they exit, their face just beams,” said Shaw.

She also thinks about the good the play will do for the people who are watching, their faces unseen in the dark of the auditorium.

“At least one person in the audience has had a bad day, week, month, year, life,” said Shaw. “They can put that beside them and laugh. It’s a gift.”

****

“Babes in Toyland” plays on the Berne-Knox-Westerlo High School stage, at 1738 Helderberg Trail in Berne on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 20 and 21, at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday, Nov. 22, at 3 p.m. General admission is $10. Tickets for children, teens, seniors, veterans, and those currently serving in the military are $7 each.

More Hilltowns News

  • On Wednesday, March 27, the state’s Department of Public Service will hold two public hearings — in addition to an ongoing survey — on broadband that will be an important opportunity for state residents to correct previous maps and analyses that determine broadband availability. 

  • As Berne-Knox-Westerlo Superintendent Timothy Mundell laid out the district’s progress toward its next budget while the district waits on lawmakers to finalize a state budget, conversation centered around one of the few things the district can control at this point — whether or not to go ahead with its annual bus purchase.

  • A driver crashed into a Rensselaerville home early Sunday morning, causing it to go up in flames. The driver and an off-duty paramedic who assisted in the rescue both suffered only minor injuries while the occupants of the home were uninjured. 

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