Tucson theater company performing 'Shrek the Musical' youth version

Saguaro City Music Theatre opens its fifth season this weekend with the young audiences’ version of “Shrek the Musical.”

It won’t be the same version you experienced when Broadway In Tucson brought “Shrek the Musical” to Centennial Hall in March 2024. This show runs about 90 minutes with an intermission, compared to the Broadway version that ran about 2½ hours with one intermission.

“The story is not any different. There’s like one or two songs that have been taken out of this version to help shorten it down, but all of the favorite songs are there,” said Saguaro City Artistic Director Drew Humphrey, who is directing the production. “The big difference is that we have 61 kids in our production.”

The kids are campers in Saguaro City’s popular Studio Arts Presents summer program, which focuses on learning, rehearsing and performing professional live musical theater.

Rehearsals were held the first two weeks at Pima Community College West Campus, where PCC students worked with the kids. This week, rehearsals moved to Berger Performing Arts Center, where performances will be held June 27-29.

Several of the kids were cast in supporting roles, including as Lord Farquaad (AJ Barrios), and the teen (Abigail Barrett) and young (Lucy Cable) Fiona.

They join a professional cast of 11 that includes freshly minted University of Arizona musical theater BFA grads Meghan Gray as Fiona and Brennan Wood as Shrek, and musical theater junior Dariya Smith as Shrek’s sassy sidekick Donkey; and Jazmine Gomez, Samantha Adams, Marcel Aza, Harrison Dodge, Ally Frieders, Lily Grubert, Lance Jacobson and Haiden Pederson in the featured ensemble.

The stage version of “Shrek” follows the same story as the 2001 animated film: Shrek is an ogre living his perfect swamp life when his solitude is suddenly invaded by fairytale creatures banished from the city-state of Duloc by its nasty dictator, Lord Farquaad. Farquaad cuts a deal with Shrek: the creatures can leave the swamp once Shrek brings him the beautiful Princess Fiona from the kingdom of Far Far Away to be his bride. But Fiona has a secret: once the sun goes down, her beauty fades and she becomes an ogre like Shrek.

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“The core of this show is acceptance and finding full, unfiltered love with just who you are, and I think that finding love with yourself, being maybe not as physically appealing as society might want you to be, is a really beautiful thing,” said Gray, who played young Fiona with a youth theater company in her native Atlanta, Georgia, when she was 12 years old.

Wood had to train his voice to go much lower than his normal high tenor to pull off Shrek’s gruff nature.

“I really want to dig into the things that make Shrek Shrek like his grumpiness and the fact that he is trying to convince everyone that he is better off alone and he’s selfish, and all those things,” said the northern Virginia native, who has a job lined up with Norwegian Cruises in the fall and plans to pursue acting in New York City early next year.

“The way the story is told and how he really grows throughout the piece, I like to bring my own comedic bits to it,” Wood said. “I want to see the ways in which I can add in him being goofy, or him being really caring and friendly and stuff like that because it’s something that he grows into throughout the course of the show.”

Gray said playing Fiona with Saguaro City is a full-circle moment for her with the character, and it’s the first stop of what is turning out to be her “Shrek” summer.

“I’m actually headed home after this production to go direct a production of ‘Shrek Jr.’ back in Atlanta, so I’m getting a whole summer of ‘Shrek’,” she said. “But it’s just a story and a musical that I’ve grown up with and been in love with the music since I was really young, and it’s so exciting to get to do this again and approach the show again at this point in my life.”

Saguaro City will perform the musical at 2 p.m. Friday, June 27; and at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, June 28 and 29. Tickets are $17-$32.50 through saguarocity.org; children 17 and younger get in free with a paid adult.

In October, Saguaro City will mount the classic musical “My Fair Lady” and in December will do “Annie.” Details at saguarocity.org.