Fairy Tale

"There was once a witch who desired to know everything. ... Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind." A pretty cool hook for a fairy tale and, as it turns out, a pretty cool inspiration for an original production being staged by Single Carrot Theatre under the intriguing title "Illuminoctem." The source material comes from 19th-century Scottish author and clergyman George MacDonald, who counted the likes of Tennyson and Lewis Carroll among his friends, the likes of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis among those he influenced.

Ballet Theatre of Maryland opened its 31st season with two successful performances last month of "Beauty and the Beast" choreographed by artistic director Dianna Cuatto, who is in her seventh season with BTM. Cuatto brought symbolism, metaphor and humor to the show, while combining romantic elements reminiscent of Jean Cocteau's 1946 film sprinkled with hints of Disney's 1991 animated version. The ballet was set to the surprisingly compatible music of Edvard Grieg to complete the magic.

Costume designer Melissa Webb keeps some pretty strange company, all of her own making. There's a Swamp Nymph, a Ghost Bride, a Grassman and a Topiary Woman, all looking like something out of an especially Grimm fairy tale. There's a Death Dance Bird, a collection of feathers on taffeta that is the stuff of an ornithologist's nightmare. And there are four Uppity Ladies, 8-foot-tall women swathed in silk and lace who, physically and emotionally, look down on the rest of us. "They're dramatic, they create drama," Webb, 34, says of her fabric creations, a mixture of earth-toned wariness and unexpected whimsy on display at South Baltimore's Gallery Imperato through Sept.

First, take a bunch of recent college grads with an interest in fantasy, horror and heavy metal. Mix in an indeterminate amount of beer. Let rise for several months. Garnish with a couple of umlauts. Then brace yourself for an original rock opera called "Gr?ndleh?mmer," currently in the early-rehearsal phase and scheduled for a premiere in October at a Charles Village venue. The project is nothing if not ambitious - five acts, 15 songs, a seven-piece band, a cast of about two dozen and the promise of lots of violence, heroics and humor.

Once upon a time, in a kingdom known as Baltimore, lived the Princess Sheila, known not so much far and wide but among those near and dear for her generosity. Although the king, a lad named Martin, ruled the land, she watched out for her closest subjects - her sister Janice, personal exchequer Dale and the dashing Ronald of Doracon, who always came bearing gifts and liked to build big things hither and yon. The princess made sure they wanted for nothing: She took care of Mildred of Utech, who employed Janice; she found work in the castle for Dale; and she made Ronald her vassal, helping him to partake of the royal coffers to build on his fiefdoms.

"The Horror of a Fairy Tale" was the title of the essay Janna Chevon Thompson submitted in January when she applied for the Baltimore Teachers Union's Extreme Classroom/Library Makeover contest. She wrote about how she'd realized her dream of teaching arts in an urban setting with her job at Southside Academy in Cherry Hill. But in addition to "discouraged students, lack of funding [and] lack of support," she was constantly frustrated by "an uninhabitable learning environment." When it's hot, there is no air conditioning.

Not all of the real estate from nursery rhymes and fairy tales is created equal. Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater's bright-orange abode, where he keeps his Marie Antoinette look-alike wife, is so light that one person easily rolled it into place on a recent workday at Clark's Elioak Farm in Ellicott City. Even the Gingerbread House that Hansel and Gretel long ago discovered on a trek through the forest slid easily off a flatbed truck, with just a few pairs of hands and a two-by-four guiding it to its cozy resting spot amid the white pines.

For the next two weekends, midshipmen will display teamwork and discipline along with performance artistry when they present Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, a fully staged, costumed and choreographed production with a live pit orchestra, in the annual Naval Academy Winter Musical. The cast will venture into the challenging realm of the 1987 musical that brought Sondheim a Tony award for his score and a Tony to James Lapine for his book. Into the Woods brings adult dimensions to familiar fairy tale characters who deal with the threatening environment they've helped to create.

In its English offering this week of Mozart's "The Magic Flute," Opera AACC calls upon the talents of Anne Arundel Community College faculty members, Maryland-based singers and 15 students from county elementary, middle and high schools. The shows, including today's at 3 p.m., will be presented at AACC's Pascal Center for the Performing Arts. James Harp, the artistic administrator of the Baltimore Opera, is the stage director of AACC's production, and Anna Binneweg, AACC's music director, is music director and conductor.

Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky never quite got the whole self-assurance thing. The composer typically disparaged his own music at one point or another, as he did in 1892, after finishing a ballet that he called "infinitely poorer than The Sleeping Beauty," which he had written a couple of years earlier. "I have no doubt about it," he wrote a friend. To another, he just said: "This old chap's getting worn out." What Tchaikovsky didn't know was that he had composed what would become the most widely beloved and performed of all ballets - The Nutcracker.