Faerie Tale Theatre: Little Red Riding Hood

Looking back over my blog, I can see that I haven’t done one of these in two years. But if this pandemic is good for anything, it’s in forcing me to finish what I started… back in 2016.

For those not in the know, Faerie Tale Theatre was a pet project of Shelley Duvall that aired back in the eighties, covering most of the traditional tales in a sincere attempt to bring them to a young audience. I missed these while I was growing up, but they certainly feel like something I would have enjoyed at the time, and in to revisit as an adult for all that eighties kitsch.

The premise was that each fifty-minute episode would dramatize a familiar fairy tale (usually with some modern comedy and plenty of filler to plump up the run-time) within the scope of an actual theatre. The sets and props are very stagey, and the actors perform has though they’re in a pantomime theatre, with a live audience watching.

A lot of the stories are pretty hit-or-miss, with a general goofiness that offsets the surprising level of talents that Shelley Duvall managed to rope into this production, but I’d say it all holds up pretty well.

Though this instalment, Little Red Riding Hood, poses a challenge. How do you convert a story that can be rattled off to a child in under two minutes into an hour-long episode? Well, you throw in a love story between the main character (now called Mary) and her father’s apprentice, give plenty of screen-time to the wolf talking to himself (he’s been kicked out of his pack because he killed a boy – the one who cried wolf?) and construct a shaky character-arc in which Mary’s wish to be treated like an adult is tied to her parents’ overprotectiveness – though this peters out as it becomes more about her love interest proving himself to her father.

That’s a lot of padding for a pretty simple story about stranger danger, but it’s not the first time I’ve seen it done: I grew up with the Cannon Movie Tales, whose take on this story involves Red Riding Hood’s father’s evil twin taking over his brother’s position in the community while he’s away at some unspecified war, and terrorizes the people with his werewolf-for-hire. Yeah, suffice to say that adaptations struggle with this story… 

Actors Whose Loved Ones Must Have Been Held Hostage by Shelley Duvall to Agree to This: Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen

The Oldest Child You've Ever Seen: Yes, Mary Steenburgen is playing Little Red Riding Hood, a character widely recognized as a child for hundreds of years by way of the fact that her name contains the word little:

Two middle-aged parents and their middle-aged daughter.

Most Clichéd Way of Trying to Code an Actress as a Child: You give her pigtails of course! It was either that or a baseball cap.

Biggest Blunder When Trying to Establish an Adult Actor as a Child: Come on, her birthday cake has at least thirty candles on it!

Most Obvious Attempt to Stretch All This Out to an Acceptable Run-Time: Let’s see, there’s the lengthy sequence of Red’s grandmother stitching the riding hood, followed by an even longer conversation about what day of the week she should visit. But I’m going to have to go with the discussion between Red and her mother about what colour streamers they should use for her birthday party.

Weirdest Out-of-Context Dialogue: Courtesy of Grandma: “Don’t come in, I’m naked!” and “Will you hide these walnuts before I throw up?”

Actor Most Suffering for His Art: Malcolm McDowell, yes the very same Malcolm McDowell of A Clockwork Orange, who takes this role just as seriously. Without a hint of self-consciousness he performs with complete panache in a face covered with costume makeup and fake fur as if an enthusiastic crowd of children were watching. Well done sir.

Oddest Costume Choice: Is Red’s mother a French maid?

Most Hilarious Delivery: Red’s father is played with an almost hilarious level of indifference and nonchalance, so please imagine him saying this to his daughter’s would-be suitor in a tone of absolute casualness: "Don't be getting any ideas about my daughter, she's just a child and besides, you're not good enough for her."

Worst Prop: 

Worst Dialogue: In what surpasses the balcony scene between Anakin and Padme in Revenge of the Sith regarding the incomprehensibleness of what’s trying to be said, is this conversation between Red and Christopher, her father’s apprentice:

"I enjoy seeing you."

"What do you mean?"

"Forget it."

"If I forget it, I won't know what you mean."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know."

Listen carefully, and you can hear the internal screaming of the actors.

Hilarious In Hindsight: The wolf introduces himself as Reginald von Lupin. Just a linguistic coincidence, or was J.K. Rowling a fan of this back in the day?

Unexpectedly Funny Line: “My name is Mary, but you can call me Little Red Riding Hood for short.” I admit it, I laughed.

Unexpectedly Funny Scene: When grandma realizes the wolf is in her house and grabs a rifle from under her pillow:

Inevitable But Still Didn’t See It Coming Sexual Innuendo: The earliest Red Riding Hood stories have always been about young women protecting themselves from sexual predators (I’ve read some commentaries which interpret the redness of the riding hood as a symbol for menstrual blood) – but which also involve Red saving herself from the wolf that’s just eaten her grandmother. Pre-Grimm, there are a number of variations in which she manages to trick the wolf and do away with him without any need of a conveniently located wood-cutter.

This time around we certainly get the subtext of the wolf inviting Red into bed with him, which afterwards has him saying she was: “the best I’ve ever had, so young and tender,” though this version then has Christopher arrive at the cottage and free both Red and her grandmother from the wolf’s stomach (courtesy of a pair of scissors) in order to better contrast the difference between good and bad suitors. To quote Into the Woods: “nice is not the same as good.”  

A scene that will give your children nightmares for weeks.

So the axe that’s carried around constantly by Red’s father ends up being a Chekhov’s Gun that never goes off, and instead the episode builds its ending by borrowing from another fairy tale: The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats. As does the Mother Goat in that tale, Red takes advantage of the wolf’s open stomach to fill it with stones – though unlike the other wolf, this one doesn’t fall into the river and drown due to the extra weight in his belly, but rather (as the voiceover tells us) never eats another human being again.

See this very important axe? It's not remotely important.

He gets off pretty lightly all things considered, Red starts being treated as the middle-aged woman she clearly was at the beginning of the story, and we all discover how difficult it is to adapt a story that’s probably stood the test of time only due to how much children love the “what big ear/eyes/teeth you have…” exchange.

I came into this episode under the impression that it was one of the worst offerings… and yeah, I suppose it was – but full credit to Malcolm McDowell. He did for the kids.