THEATER:Actors get squirrelly in youth musical

It’ll be a lot more than a walk in the park next week when the Laguna Playhouse brings the lights up on its first youth theater production of the new season.

“The Great Squirrel Uprising” is set in New York’s Central Park and involves a rebellion among the furry creatures, led by a 10-year-old girl who’s had it with her fellow humans’ rudeness and indiscriminate trash disposal.

In this message-bearing adventure, Scruff the squirrel enlists a squad of his fellow bushy tails to block traffic at one entrance to the park. Nearly captured by the police, he’s rescued by young Sally March, who’s in sympathy with the squirrels’ efforts.

Birds, mice and other denizens of the urban jungle are enlisted in an all-out protest against littering and other forms of carelessness in this youth-oriented play by Dan Elish, who also contributed words and music to the stage version of his novel.

Elish came up with the idea while strolling through Central Park in the early 1990s, and the first production of the musical had a limited run in New York 13 years ago.

After that time, no one seemed interested in producing the show, until this year when the playhouse’s director of youth theater, education and outreach, Donna Inglima, was handed a CD of Elish’s score by a mutual friend.

“After listening to the clever lyrics and skillful tunes, I knew it was time to give ‘The Great Squirrel Uprising’ new life,” Inglima said.

It’ll be a life on as grand a scale as the regular adult productions at the playhouse. While its plays are aimed at children of elementary and middle school age, they are directed and designed by theater professionals and fully mounted with the playhouse’s technical resources.

Also, the staff for each production is drawn principally from the theater’s Youth Conservatory program. Casting is nearly always age-appropriate, with young people playing the juvenile roles and local amateur actors filling the adult assignments, although fully professional Equity guest artists also may be used.

Previews of “The Great Squirrel Uprising” will be presented Wednesday and Thursday, with the show opening Friday and playing through Nov. 5.

Youth Improv

On the heels of the production’s second-ever opening night, the theater’s Youth Evenings of Improv will bow in on Halloween.

These shows will run Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 and 2, at 7:30 p.m. Shows are priced at $3 and $5.

Call the playhouse box office at (949) 494-2787 for reservations.