Angela's Flying Bed

Description
*** [THREE STARS] In Karl Greenberg and Dave Hall's musical, a girl named Angela (Maya Gaston, Greenberg’s daughter) flies around the world on a magical, talking bed, encountering strange characters along the way. City kids might be able to relate, because Angela is--like her parents and most Manhattanites--stressed-out and overworked. (Imagination class? Studying for playdates?) But what kid wants to relate to this melancholy, bored and reluctant girl, who would rather sit at home in a bed than fly around the world in one? The title character disappoints, the dialogue rhymes inconsistently, and the bed’s solo song gives horrible advice to kids with problems (“Just sleep on it and take the mattress in your own two hands”--expect a new generation of Valium addicts), but the goofy animals that Angela meets on her adventure almost make up for these failings. Lydia Gaston and Trip Plymale are a fine comic duo, playing Angela’s busy-bee parents, the llamas in pajamas and the awful pretty, pretty awful birds; and the musical's high point comes when Angela crashes into the ocean and meets a trio of selfish shellfish, singing about being “crabby.” But if you and your kids want to see a show about a kid and a flying bed, you'd be better off renting the 1971 classic "Bedknobs and Broomsticks."–-Blair Tidwell, TONY Kids Intern