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Tim Parsons
THEA 210
Kendra Johnson
13 November 2013
Aladdin and Other Enchanting Tales Analysis
Aladdin and Other Enchanting Tales was the second play that I have ever seen. There
were a multitude of things that I saw which intrigued me. Though this may be true, there were
also a few things in the play - despite it being primarily for children - that I did not exactly favor.
Overall, the acting was what I expected, the humor was intended mainly for children, and the
play itself was coordinated efficiently.
The two main characters in the play were the Sultan and Scheherazade. The Sultan was
played by Peter Smith. Smith as Sultan appeared to me as a pompous and desperate person as he
was essentially blackmailing Scheherazade to marry him or else he will kill her brother. The shirt
and pants the Smith wore were a Crayola yellow color. With this he wore a crown-like hat and
also had a red belt and fleece looking coat that matched his clothes. The apparel of the Smith fit
the Sultans personality well as I could have easily identified him as an authority figure if there
were no sound or dialogue happening.
Scheherazade was played be a few people, but predominately Louisa deButts.
Scheherazade wore a blue dress that contrasted the Sultans yellow clothing. Her clothing
seemed fairly nice as if she was from the middle-to-upper class. Unlike the Smith, deButts
performance of Scheherazade confused me a bit. As I have only seen Disneys version of

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Aladdin, I had no clue what or who she was. The fact that none of the characters on the stage
physically said a word and expressed things through motion, I never ultimately figured out who
she was and of what significance she was. Her personality seemed to sway back between being
apathetic about her brother and an innocent little girl, which also brought more confusion to me.
The acting in the play was difficult for me to judge for a few characters as none of the
actors spoke and showed true emotion. Sure, the actors had to make their emotion evident
through their movements and motion, but this not the same thing as showing emotion through
speaking. In addition, if the actor fails to introduce themselves and inform me about who they
are, then I have no idea who I am even analyzing. These few select characters that were difficult
to judge were primarily Scheherazade and the Dragon Lady. For Scheherazade, I understood that
her brother was being threatened with life or death. Other than this fact, I had no idea what her
background was, what social class she was from, and so on. For the Dragon Lady, her character
and scene were presented poorly to me. She suddenly appeared out of nowhere and then I was
confused to whom she was until they actually brought out the twenty foot dragon prop which
then made a connection in my brain; Oh, that lady must be a dragon.
Despite there being poor presentations of characters, there were also good ones in this
mix. The portrayal of the Sultan by Smith was very good and he also gave me a few laughs
during some scenes. I also enjoyed the portrayal of Aladdin by Smith. He seemed to suit the type
of acting required by a kind of play like this. His motions made many things apparent and not
obvious enough so that we, the audience, could make the connection of whatever he was
pointing out. I enjoyed the way the Sorcerer was played too. His clothing made it apparent that
he was of evil nature. He also had an obvious goal throughout the play, which was to obtain the

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magic lamp. These three characters were the main thing that kept my attention throughout the
play.
The atmosphere of the room was what I expected it to be. It was slightly lit, no one was
on the stage, and there was a faint noise of children in the background. The theatre itself was
proscenium. The way actors entered and exited the open floor was very strange. It seemed as if
the curtain was made of some type of paper cut into slips. With this apparatus, the actors could
enter and exit the stage effectively with very large objects by walking through the paper slips.
As I have mentioned, there are a few things in the play that I did not favor. One of these
things was the appearance of the genie. If I had not known there was a genie in the play before I
watched this play, I would not have known what the genie in the play was. The genie in this
particular play looked more like a goblin than anything else. The genie had a deceptive smile
on its face and the ears on it were pointy. Another thing I did not like was how the paper
curtain the crew used had a background projected on it. The reason I did not like is because
when the actors would flee the stage, the paper would rustle by the wind thus making it look like
the background is continuously moving when it is not supposed to be. The last thing I did not
like that I will talk about is how the same woman voiced over every character. This was certainly
a problem when the actor would not make it apparent that he/she is the one that is supposed to be
talking. Once this happened, I would lose track of who is talking and who is not.
Though there were a multitude of things I did not favor in this play, there were also a few
things I did like. The humor in the play was intentionally meant for children, but the script did
include bits and bytes of humor which made the older part of the audience. These bits of humor
contributed to the attention of the older part of the audience. Another thing I liked was the part

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when they balanced Aladdins dream girl onto one sword only. I still do not know how they
managed to do this. At first I thought the girl was not real until she moved when Aladdin got
closer to her. At that moment my mind was blown and I spent the next five minutes trying to
figure out how they balanced a human body onto one sword.
The sound effects in the play were not very apparent to me. The only sounds I noticed
was the sword slashing sounds when the Dragon Lady was being killed. Other than that, there
was not anything spectacular to say about the sound other than that it was not distracting. The
lighting in the play also was not that special. The only thing I have to mention about the lights
are how they moved on the paper curtain which slightly caught my attention when it was not
supposed to. The backgrounds they projected onto the paper were sometimes confusing and
rarely told me the setting of the scene. There were a few exceptions to this. Two examples of the
good backgrounds were the desert Aladdin went through and the jungle Sinbad was in. I would
list the bad backgrounds, but for most of them I could not figure out what they were supposed to
be.
In conclusion, the play can be considered good if you want to bring your child to it. If one
wanted to go watch the play for the overall quality, I would not recommend it. There were
certainly a few things the actors did on stage which were neat, but other than that it was not any
more special than an ordinary play. I must give credit to the play for doing interesting spectacles
for being a childrens play. Aladdin and Other Enchanting Tales was a fun-filled play which will
be fun for any children you bring and will certainly keep your attention to say the least.