Just completed, this 225 seat amphitheater takes its cues from the famous Fables. Pairs of animals - the Lion and Mouse, Ant and Grasshopper, Hare and Frog, Fox and Raven, etc. enjoy the show from the tops of brightly-colored columns facing the theater's arcade. Oversized masks of the Tortoise and Hare are rendered as comedy and tragedy.
The stage opens both to the tiered rigs of seats, and to Fairyland's Great Lawn, on the other side, providing the possibility of larger performances. Flanking and framing the stage, in the Greek tradition, are buildings holding spaces for sets and offstage actors.
Entertainment, often today a 'product' of vast business organizations, is increasingly attached to 'venues' - megaplexes, shopping complexes, and, especially, theme parks, early Fairyland visitor Walt Disney's place prominent among these. The unspoken corollary of this phenomenon, of course, is that most other places seem relieved of the obligation to be entertaining at all.
Fairyland, whose admission has escalated now to $6, and where adults are forbidden, except when accompanied by a child, reminds us that entertainment can be both an everyday and modest proposition; and of the fun of places at once read about, imagined, and real.
The stage opens both to the tiered rigs of seats, and to Fairyland's Great Lawn, on the other side, providing the possibility of larger performances. Flanking and framing the stage, in the Greek tradition, are buildings holding spaces for sets and offstage actors.
Entertainment, often today a 'product' of vast business organizations, is increasingly attached to 'venues' - megaplexes, shopping complexes, and, especially, theme parks, early Fairyland visitor Walt Disney's place prominent among these. The unspoken corollary of this phenomenon, of course, is that most other places seem relieved of the obligation to be entertaining at all.
Fairyland, whose admission has escalated now to $6, and where adults are forbidden, except when accompanied by a child, reminds us that entertainment can be both an everyday and modest proposition; and of the fun of places at once read about, imagined, and real.