Grab a buddy and your best questing outfit – and brush up on your fairy tales. The Marathon High School drama club is headed into the swamp.
“Shrek: The Musical” brings the 2001 animated classic to the stage, trotting out a menagerie of fairy tale characters banished from their homes by the evil Lord Farquaad (Danny Diaz). Eager to get rid of the swarms of new visitors in his no-longer-quiet swamp, Shrek the ogre (Cameron Van Hoose) and his annoyingly persistent buddy Donkey (Emily Martinez Rojas) cut a deal with Farquaad to rescue the lord’s bride-to-be, Princess Fiona (Mia Oliva).
“I was part of the stage crew for a production of this about 10 or 12 years ago in Oklahoma,” said director Rhonda Crutcher. “I loved the music, and I loved the message, which is inclusion for everybody, loving yourself for who you are and not being ashamed of that. And so I always had this in the front of my head as a show to do. We had the right cast for it this year.”
Although the original film came out years before any of the cast were born, they told the Weekly it was still a classic growing up – and a few were even deeply familiar with the 2008 musical adaptation well before the drama club’s announcement.
“I grew up watching the musical with my grandma,” said Oliva. “Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be here doing a musical that I used to watch every weekend.”
“My dad, who’s going to come watch it, is one of those people who loves watching Disney movies,” said Rojas, tasked with living up to Eddie Murphy’s endlessly-quotable performance from the Dreamworks film. “When I told him I got the role, he started quoting all this stuff. But he watches it in Spanish, with a different voice actor. So I want him to get the same feel as if he was watching it.”
The show features several middle-school actors in prominent roles as well as multiple first-time leads, all stepping up in place of longtime club members from the class of 2025. It’s a challenge Crutcher says they’ve fully embraced – so much that she was able to split some roles between two deserving actors.
“I wanted to give Cameron a good featured role for his senior year, and I knew Shrek would be perfect for him, but I genuinely didn’t know who would take the role of Fiona,” she said. “Mia came in, and I’d never really heard her sing – I didn’t know she had that voice.
“And the two young girls who play Young Fiona, Ryan Bryk and Charley Dunn, I’d never heard either of them sing. Both those girls really surprised me with their voices, and I was happy to be able to double-cast that role.”
“Shrek” runs at 7 p.m. on Thursday through Saturday, April 9-11, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, April 12. Tickets are $10 for students or $15 for adults, with elementary school students or younger admitted for free. Purchase tickets at the door or in advance by scanning the QR code.
Photos by CATHY WALTERS/Contributed
