The Goblin Production of: Little Red Riding Hood
As soon as Principal Headcrusher introduced them, at least two hundred goblins stormed into Petrified Pavilion, making a lot of noise with their instruments but certainly not a note of music. The rest of the goblins did a very strange hopping and spinning dance to a non-existent beat.
They finished the dance in a very awkward pose, which most were unable to hold and fell over.
Nobody applauded.
The goblin leader in his red suit and poofy red hair raised his arms and said in a voice that sounded like he had inhaled a whole tank of helium, “Hey, come oooon!”
A few students clapped, politely.
“All right! That’s more like it,” said the cheerful goblin leader. “I now present to you the tale of Little Red Riding Hood.” All the goblins rushed off the stage and put on costumes.
“Once upon a time, there was a very big girl named Little Red Riding Hood. ”
A boy goblin wearing a blue dress and a yellow cap went skipping across the stage holding a basket and singing to himself. First off, it was odd that no part of his costume was red, but it was even more odd that a boy goblin was playing Little Red Riding Hood when there seemed to be plenty of girl goblin choices, though I suspect that the reason is because goblins can’t tell the difference between boy and girl humans. They probably thought Little Red Riding Hood was a boy.
The goblin narrator continued, “Her parents named her Little Red Riding Hood because she was very little when she was a baby and at the time they only had one red outfit for her to wear. Had her parents realized she would grow to be bigger than her infant form and acquire many different colors of clothes, they would have named her Big Many Colors of Riding Hoods. However, her parents lacked the ability to think ahead and named her Little Red Riding Hood.”
The students were already beginning to shake their heads.
“Her grandmother was sick in bed, so Little Red Riding Hood was carrying a basket of leaches to her cottage to suck out the illness, which we goblins know is the best kind of medicine.”
The goblin actor playing Little Red Riding Hood stuck his hand in the basket to show that there were real leaches inside. Then he quickly pulled his hand out screaming, “Ouchie Wouchies!” The leaches had attached themselves to the tips of his fingers. The goblin actor ran around the stage in a frenzy trying to shake the leaches off. It wasn’t working.
The goblin ran backstage to get help. As he left the stage, his understudy was pushed onto the stage to take over in his place. His understudy was another boy goblin but he was wearing a yellow dress and a blue cap—the opposite of what the first goblin was wearing.
All the students smacked their hands on their foreheads in unison.
“Ahem, as I was saying,” the goblin narrator continued, “Little Red Riding Hood was on her way to her grandmother’s house, when suddenly a big, scary wolf appeared!”
The goblin actor playing the wolf jumped in front of Little Red Riding Hood. It was very clearly the same wolf costume they had used last year in the production of The Three Little Pigs with blades of grass glued all over the goblin’s clothes to look like fur.
“Grrrr,” said the wolf actor, “where are you going?”
“To my grandmother’s house.”
“All right,” said the wolf. “Thanks for the info.”
The narrator continued, “Since Little Red Riding Hood gave up her grandmother’s location so easily, the wolf ran as fast as he could to the cottage. He would have eaten Little Red Riding Hood right there, but there was a lumberjack walking by. The wolf was very fast and arrived at the grandmother’s house long before Little Red Riding Hood, gobbled up poor Grandma, put on one of her nightgowns and laid in the bed.”
A group of goblins had become the grandmother’s house by doing gymnastics and standing on each other’s shoulders. The wolf actor put on a nightgown and waited for Little Red Riding Hood to arrive, lying on a bed of straw.
The narrator proceeded, “When little Red Riding Hood came in, the wolf was waiting for her with a cap pulled over its face.”
"Oh, grandmother, what big ears you have!" said Little Red Riding Hood.
"All the better to hear you with,” said the wolf.
"Oh, grandmother, what big eyes you have!"
"All the better to see you with."
"Oh, grandmother, what big arms you have!"
"All the better to hug you with!"
"Oh, grandmother, what big teeth you have!"
"All the better to eat you with!"
The wolf jumped out of the bed and stuffed Little Red Riding Hood under its nightgown to make it look like he had gobbled her up.
“As soon as the wolf had finished this tasty meal, he climbed back into bed and fell asleep, but not to worry! The lumberjack heard the snoring and went inside the house and saw what had happened.”
A lumberjack goblin carrying an axe tiptoed inside. The students closed their eyes, not liking where this was going.
The lumberjack goblin raised its axe into the air, but then the goblins playing the house couldn’t hold themselves up any longer and came crashing down on top of the actor goblins.
“Ouchies! Not good!” the goblins were moaning.
“Nevermind,” said the narrator, going along with the action. “I guess the roof fell on top of everyone. And when the lumberjack eventually woke up, he chopped open the wolf and everything the wolf had ever eaten came rolling out still alive! First was Little Red Riding Hood, then Grandma, then sixteen bunny rabbits, then a few raccoons, then three circus clowns on unicycles, then a cowboy on horseback, then…”
As the goblin narrator described each odd thing that the wolf had eaten, goblins pranced across the stage trying to illustrate them. Three clown goblins on unicycles came forth, but they didn’t know how to ride the unicycles and fell flat on their faces. A cowboy goblin came out on a real horse they somehow managed to get hold of, but the horse immediately bucked the goblin off and went galloping around the stage, knocking over the rest of the goblins who had managed to hold their positions as the walls of the house.
The parade continued for what felt like hours, but it may have only been five or ten minutes. It mercifully concluded with the narrator speaking, “…then thirty-two buckets of fried chicken, then a great big telephone pole, and finally, the entire lost continent of Atlantis. Thank you!”
I don’t know how the goblins pulled off those last ones because I couldn’t bear to watch anymore.
Once it was over, every goblin returned to the stage and started cheering for themselves and doing backflips, but they could not pull off the backflips and landed on their heads.
Nobody was clapping for them.
“Hey! Come oooon!” urged the goblin narrator. But this time no one could even bring themselves to clap politely.
“Come ooon!” all the goblins were shouting, urging the crowd to clap for them, to no avail.
As the curtain was closing on them, one student, Eddie Bookman, felt bad enough to clap just once.
Every goblin heard the clap and became elated, shouting, “All riiiight!” just as the curtain closed. As soon as they were gone, all the students cheered like crazy.