A creative twist for kids on an Andersen classic

The Arden Theatre does not consider your children second-class citizens, not even the youngest ones. As is the case with their world-premiere work The Flea and the Professor, they're happy to create new theater for them, based not on the most popular new spy series but rather on Hans Christian Andersen's mostly forgotten final tale, turning it into a musical, and presenting the finished product on the mainstage.

The Arden respects your kids so much it commissioned a hot young playwright (Jordan Harrison, whose Kid Simple was recently produced by Azuka Theatre) and grabbed a Barrymore-winning director (Anne Kauffman, who helmed Wilma Theater's Becky Shaw). They gathered talent from both Broadway and Broad Street (Avenue Q's Rob McClure - also a hometown boy - as the Professor; Philly favorite Scott Greer as the Flea), and reached across the country to employ Richard Gray, a composer and lyricist well-regarded for his work with the Seattle Children's Theatre.

They did all this in the service of a weird, 65-minute, Wizard of Oz kind of black-and-white-to-Technicolor adventure involving hot air balloons, cannibals, a magician, his performing flea, and some major departures from Andersen's wisp of a bachelor fantasy (in its original form, it's barely long enough to make a satisfying bedtime story).

The results are exciting, funny, and creatively imagined. After all, the show's costar is a flea, and while there are many ways to go about depicting him - perhaps with a Tinkerbell-style-beam of light - it's rather inspired to go all out and have plus-sized Greer bouncing on a mini-trampoline in a bright red, striped, feathered, leotard-based concoction (Olivera Gajic supplies the show's zany, bewigged sartorial flair).

Gray's songbook is slightly padded (the "cannibal language" ditty "Gobble Gobble," and "Think Thin," a song about trying to get an overloaded balloon off the ground, feel particularly wedged in), but nods to Andersen's more commercially successful material, such as The Little Mermaid, via the Cannibal Princess' yearning love song, "Just a Guy" ("He's just a guy/who happens to be a flea") should garner chuckles of satirical recognition from both parents and children.

And its first-class delivery by that foot-stomping princess (Alex Keiper, as the most unapologetically ill-tempered royal since the Red Queen took up croquet) is the performance - among a stage full of hardly understated performances - that keeps those chuckles coming throughout.

Kids' stuff? Sure. The Arden clearly knows its audience.

The Flea and the Professor

Through June 12 at the Arden Theatre, 40 N. Second St. Tickets: $16 to $32. Information: 215-922-1122 or www.ardentheatre.org

Follow Wendy Rosenfield on Twitter at #philastage.