What happens to fairy tale characters as they get older? That's the question answered by a new comedy, Aging is Not a Fairy Tale by Patricia Goodson, in which the dilemmas of lost youth are confronted by characters of well-known bedtime stories: Sleeping Beauty and her Prince, the Evil Queen (from Snow White) and her Mirror, the Three Little Pigs, Rumplestiltskin and Hansel and Gretel and their Witch. The characters, rendered late in their lives, show us how living happily ever after means dealing with loneliness, finding a purpose, maintaining health, overcoming money and housing issues, keeping a positive attitude and creating a social life.
The obsession of the Queen with beauty has bankrupted her kingdom. The forest is now the size of a theme park. Sleeping Beauty has become a drug addict and the Three Pigs have become porkers—they just sit and eat all day. Poor Rumpelstiltskin, who spun gold out of straw, can no longer sew—he has severe arthritis. But all is not lost. The Queen's narcissism, with the help of her snarky mirror on the wall, becomes a catalyst for inadvertently solving the aging problems of her subjects.
