Candy-flavored musical ‘Willy Wonka’ opens Super Summer Theatre season

Either/Or:

Either she's the most mature 11-year-old in Las Vegas. Or a 30-year-old with height issues.

"Hello" ... "It's very nice to meet you" ... Direct gaze ... Warm smile ... Firm handshake.

Israeli-born Almog Aybar Agron could teach Poise 101.

Required to gender-bend herself for her role as Charlie in "Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka" -- the sweet-tooth songfest opening the Super Summer Theatre season at Spring Mountain Ranch State Park -- she might also be the littlest Method actor in town.

"I'm trying to watch other boys in my class, and around the cast to see how they walk, how they sit, how they do everything," she says of an approach that would've made Dean and Brando beam.

"I don't just sit normally, maybe I put an elbow on my knee. And they don't hug people as much as girls do. It's more high-five, knuckle-touch."

Give the gal props for prep.

"Most of these kids were just gangbusters right out of the gate in rehearsals," says director Phil Shelburne, whose PS Productions is mounting "Wonka," the musical about Charlie Bucket's adventures in that iconic candy haven, filled with temptations both edible and ethical.

"They were strong enough that they could've done it right then. My concern was figuring out how not to let them lose their edge through the process."

Interpreting a classic that traveled from book to film (twice) to stage, Shelburne is guiding a 30-person cast -- including 11 children -- lead by Almog and Shawn Martin as Wonka, the charismatic/enigmatic candy maestro.

"I wanted to stay away from too much of a bubble-gum character," says Martin -- also a stiltwalker, juggler and puppeteer around town -- arriving at a recent rehearsal. "There's all the beauty and passion, but with any genius comes that dark edge, the madness of the genius. There should be a nice ebb and flow of the positive and the scary."

Facing the hilly greenery that hosts the ranch's annual pilgrimage of picnicking theatergoers, the stage on this night -- black-walled and sparse, props piled up, a lone ladder rising to the hanging lights -- is far from Willy's tasty-looking world.

Given budgetary and logistical constraints, Shelburne is opting for visual suggestion and viewer imagination.

"It will be a very minimal set, a bunch of boxes and metal things we can move all over the place," he says.

"Even if we had a spectacular set and a million dollars to fill it in, there's a key to this show -- it's about your imagination. I could never put something as good as somebody's imagination onstage. We're trying to give you a flavor and hope you will embellish that world with us."

Before rehearsal revs up onstage, choreographer Rommell Pacson walks -- no, dances -- a cast member through some moves on the grass below, springing into a lithe, Oompah-Loompah leap.

"We couldn't get enough kids to be Oompah-Loompahs, so we decided to use adults, which helped me because a lot of them have dance training," Pacson says about casting Wonka's creepy-kooky worker bees.

"No one knows who they are or where they're from -- it's not like they're from the '20s and you have to do the Charleston, or the '50s and you have to do the jitterbug. In the two movies, they're outlandish, UFO-ish. Here, it's just a tribe of people, so my movements are very tribal, very grounded and scary."

As dusk slowly descends over Red Rock Canyon, Almog further dissects the details of her role.

"For every kid, there's a word in the book that describes them -- Violet is 'beastly,' Augustus is 'greedy,' Charlie is 'heroic,' so I'm trying to put that in," says the actress who appeared around town in "The King and I," "The Music Man" and "The Wizard of Oz" -- and in a workshop of "Mary Poppins" for legendary producer Cameron Mackintosh.

"I read the book twice for it to sink in."

C'mon kid. This 11-year-old act? A ruse, right? Show us your driver's license ... Your voter registration form ... Your canceled mortgage checks ...

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.