Pinocchio
Playhouse On Park
West Hartford
Oct. 31, 2026
Halloween is a great day for a theater premiere, a day of costumes and make-believe made better with a live performance. Costumed children showed up with their parents this Halloween for the first show of Playhouse on Park’s 18th season of Theater for Young Audiences, Pinocchio.
Pinocchio takes place in an unfinished theater,. The audience has intruded on a group of workers, splattered in paint and grime, who are trying to get the stage ready for a production. When the audience refuses to leave after having spent good money to see a play, the workers decide to put on the story of the puppet becoming a real boy themselves. The play hews close to the 1940s animated classic, taking a few liberties here and there to make the story work better for stage.
Playhouse on Park’s production of Greg Banks’ take on Pinocchio is a blast for children and adults alike. It starts with the set. The production crew transformed the stage into a playground of paint, benches, tools, half-finished projects and random thingimijigs strewn everywhere. It’s a clever way to add tactility to the fantastic story of Pinocchio, and gives the performers plenty of cool things to play with throughout the show.
Speaking of which, the ensemble cast took on multiple roles which all demanded their own characterization and physicality to distinguish between roles. The performers leapt across the stage, hurled themselves to the ground, swung on ropes, and generally turned the stage into a jungle gym that delighted the audience throughout the show. By the end of the 75-minute runtime, the performers were dripping with sweat, a testament to the vigor of their performance.
Performers Alex McLaughlin, Caelie Scott Flanagan, Anna Rock and Jason Pietroluongo all deserve the praise. The standout was Josh Karam. He played the musician of the group. Although he didn’t have any speaking lines, he was integral to moving the story along. He played several instruments, including the ukulele, a recorder-like device, a standing bass, and a slide whistle. In one inspired scene, Karam ran around the set from instrument to instrument as the other performers recounted the tale. He turned the music into a character on stage.
Another achievement of Pinocchio is how it treats its young audience with respect and encourages them to participate in the events of the play. It’s not that Pinocchio is a difficult story to follow. It does require children to think through the levels of abstraction the play sets up, with painters pretending to be actors who then play the characters. Children deserve quality entertainment that challenges them. The kids at the Saturday performance were eager to follow the story’s twists and turns and help Pinocchio make the right decisions.
Playhouse on Park’s production of Pinocchio both shows why the story is a timeless tale children love, and puts a fresh spin on it for us children at heart who are familiar with it.
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Pinocchio runs at Playhouse on Park every Saturday through Nov. 21.
Jamil checks out the next concert at Audio Feed.
