The Many Iterations of ‘Sleeping Beauty’
BY VARUNI SINHA
The Post and Courier: May 21 2015 10:45 pm
Maria Tatar, author of “The Annotated Brothers Grimm,” has compared fairy tales to memes, cultural units that are memorable and easy to refashion. Many of these stories are about transformations, such as frogs turning into princes. And in the more than 400 years since French author Charles Perrault wrote “Sleeping Beauty” in 1697 (itself a recast of a 14th-century prose romance called “Perceforest”), his tale has been retold innumerable times. Here’s a sampling of the many adaptations:
1890: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composes a ballet score that fuses together Perrault’s original story and the Brothers Grimm version. It features Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood and other French fairy tale characters.
1959: Maleficent, with her pale, batlike green skin, emerges as the most remarkable character of Walt Disney’s film adaptation. The score and songs are based on the 1890 ballet.
1987: Cannon’s short-lived attempt to do battle with Disney resulted in this odd American-Israeli co-production starring Morgan Fairchild, former Go-Go Jane Wiedlin and, in the title role, Raquel Welch’s daughter Tahnee Welch.
2007: The award-winning Canadian short “Sleeping Betty,” drawn entirely in Indian ink, includes Queen Victoria, Henry VIII, a court jester and a many-eyed extraterrestrial each trying to rouse the title character.
2011: The cult TV series “Once Upon a Time” plunks various fairy tale characters — including Princess Aurora, as Sleeping Beauty is known — into the unchanging town of Storybrooke, Maine.
2013: Carlo Colla and Sons Marionette Company premieres the version that will appear at Spoleto Festival USA, based on the 1890 ballet and Perrault’s original. Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, the Seven Dwarves and other characters from French fairy tales appear in the story. Also, the kiss that awakens Sleeping Beauty is insignificant to the plot.
2014: Sleeping Beauty shifts to a supporting role in the hit film “Maleficent,” which revisits the story from the perspective of the evil (or is she?) queen, played by Angelina Jolie.
Published in The Post and Courier on May 21 2015 10:45 pm
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