Children’s shows have high standards to meet. They’ve got the toughest and most honest of audiences. When children’s theater is done well, the audience is mesmerized and engaged. When it is mediocre or worse, children disengage and talk among themselves.

Tibbit’s Summer Popcorn Theater is a summer-long event with two plays and three touring concerts. They opened the season with the charming “Miss Nelson is Missing.” On the main stage of the Tibbits Summer Theater right now is “Peter Pan,” a musical as delightful for young people as it is for the adults who attend. On Friday, the company opened the second play of the popcorn theater season—“Rumpelstiltskin.”

Unlike “Miss Nelson is Missing” and “Peter Pan,” which were both excellent shows, “Rumpelstiltskin” is simply mediocre. It is slow paced and fails to engage the audience on any real level.

Of the four actors, Joey Gugliemelli as Rumpelstiltzkin stood out. (He’s also playing Smee in “Peter Pan.”) He delighted the audience as the rapscallion who was willing to help the Miller’s daughter spin straw into gold for a price. He was impish, had a bowlegged walk and had the vocal strength to make the elf a real character. While he is often portrayed as evil, Bobb James’ version of this tale and Gugliemelli’s acting made him a sympathetic, likeable character. We don’t want him to make off with the king and queen’s baby, but we’re still rooting for him to get something out of the bargain–something James provides us with in this tale.

The other three actors in this play were soft-spoken and difficult to hear—even from the sixth row. They were timid in their acting and failed to pick up on cues.

The passage of time was also done with lights out and no sound cues, lengthening the show and inserting more dead space into it. It needed something more animated.

There were many opportunities in this script for the actors to go big—the exaggerated claims of Mitch the Miller, the hopeless tears of Jessica the miller’s daughter, the royalty of the king and his certainty that Jessica could pull off the assigned tasks.

Director Charles Burr is currently giving an excellent performance as Captain Hook and Mr. Darling in “Peter Pan” which may explain some of the inattention to this show.

While Gugliemelli is quite good, he’s only one character in four and not the one on stage the most. He wasn’t enough to rescue this show from the restlessness of the crowd of children who packed the place to see the show.

If you want to take your kids to Tibbits Opera House—and it is a great venue to take them to—go right to the main stage production and see “Peter Pan” instead of “Rumpelstiltskin.

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