Havana

The stage is nearly bare but suggests a dark attic in London where four mice wearing impeccable gray suits are retelling the story of Cinderella. They stay largely faithful to Charles Perrault's original plot, but we learn that the narrators--John, Paul, George and Ringo--grew up in Liverpool, love music and, when they call for help, they do so with the cry, "Help, I need somebody!" When Cinderella feels sad and forgotten in her vast, empty house, the Fab Four appear and one of them sings, "Ah, look at all the lonely people!"

The actors, whose ages range between 6 and 14, play their own instruments, often incorporating the lively rhythms of the Caribbean into familiar Beatles songs. They live in Havana and speak Spanish, but these children will perform the play entirely in English wherever they can. In recent years their company, La Colmenita (the little beehive), has appeared at some of the most important children's theater festivals in the world: the World Festival of Children's Theater, in Germany; the Hans Christian Andersen Children's Theatre Festival, in Denmark; the International Festival at the Auditórium Cervantes, in Madrid; the International Festival of Music and Folk Dance, near Granada; as well as at dozens of other venues in Latin America, Asia and Europe. They regularly tour Cuba from one end of the island to the other; between performing other works from their wide repertory, they are preparing to premier Cinderella before a Beatles-crazed Havana audience.

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