Caraway puts on delightful folk-tale pair

JOLLY RUMBALO ★★★★ Stage 11, Nordic Studio Theatre

Edmonton’s Caraway Story Theatre has a mandate: “To share lesser-known folk tales from every culture and country in the world.” Over the past decade they’ve covered 10 such nations, and their latest show — which brings together two English stories of yore — puts one more notch in the company’s belt.

The first piece, The Three Sillies, follows a bachelor who is so put off by the theatricality of his beloved-to-be’s family (each in turn breaking down crying over a hypothetical falling hammer) that he vows he will return only if he comes across three even sillier people in the countryside. And the second, The Yarn-Spinners, is a sheep-centric tale about the only woman in town who spins stories, not yarn.

Caraway has been my go-to source of adventurous kids’ material for several Fringes now, and this may be the strongest show of theirs I’ve seen yet. The cast evolves each year, but their energy and comedic timing remain the same.

In this year’s outing, the first half shines the brightest, especially the scene where six silly sisters argue over everything — from which one of them has gone missing to who got the best ribbon from the town butcher. And Paige Wadley’s turn as a man who can’t figure out how to put on his pants? Well, that’s a crowd-pleaser if I’ve ever heard of one.