Review: The Princess and the Goblins

Posted by Curtain Up! on Sep 16, 2025

Denver’s newest ensemble-driven performance company, Third Side Theatre Company, presents The Princess and the Goblins and doesn’t just stage a fairy tale—it conjures one with theatrical sleight of hand and ensemble precision. Written by Kellie Fox with Brian Dowling and under Aaron Vega’s mighty direction, the production unfolds at The People’s Building on East Colfax in Aurora, CO, like a dream stitched together from shadow and song. Projections ripple across a screen like living storybook pages, while shadow puppets and hand-crafted creatures emerge from the dark with uncanny precision. Original live music underscores the action with a haunting pulse, threading emotional texture through every descent and revelation. The cast, moving as a single, many-limbed organism, weaves these elements into a tapestry that feels both handmade and mythic—an enchanted collage of light, movement, and memory.

Though George MacDonald penned the original beloved fairy tale in 1872, this retelling pulses with modern resonance. Princess Irene’s journey—guided by intuition, invisible support, and a refusal to ignore her inner voice—mirrors the contemporary struggle to trust oneself in a world of noise and doubt. The goblins, with their rigid thinking and fear of change, evoke the forces that resist progress: bureaucracy, bigotry, and burnout. And the magical thread spun by a forgotten elder? It’s the metaphorical lifeline we all crave—ancestral wisdom, community care, or even therapy—quietly guiding us through the dark. Third Side doesn’t just revive a fairy tale; it retools it for the age of anxiety, reminding us that courage often looks like listening, and magic might just be the act of believing anyway.

This production leans unapologetically into the architecture of classic fairy tale storytelling, with Princess Irene (Kellie Fox) and her steadfast companion Curdie (Max Lubeck) descending into goblin-infested peril and emerging transformed. Irene’s arc is textbook mythic: trial, revelation, return. The goblins—equal parts menacing and mischievous—are drawn straight from the Brothers Grimm casting call, serving as delightfully archetypal foils. At the heart of the magic is a shimmering thread spun by a spectral great-great-grandmother (Lisa Kraai), woven from spider silk and delivered by a pigeon with no billing but plenty of gravitas. It’s the kind of logic only fairy tales dare to deploy, invisible, improbable, and emotionally airtight.

Supporting this enchanted scaffolding are actors Brian Dowling and Jeremiah Martinez, who morph fluidly between characters and conjure creatures through exquisite puppetry. Their versatility adds texture and momentum to the narrative, grounding the whimsy in theatrical craft. Original music—composed and performed by AbdulKarim Islam, Ryan Glaser, and Alex Seracuse—adds another layer of atmosphere, with melodies that feel both otherworldly and emotionally grounded. The ensemble’s commitment to the genre’s emotional truth—where transformation is earned and magic is never questioned—makes the production feel less like a retelling and more like a rediscovery.

The Princess and the Goblins, presented by Third Side Theatre Company and running at The People’s Building through September 20, is an inventive piece of ensemble storytelling that’s well worth your time. With its blend of projections, puppetry, and live music, the 70-minute performance strikes a balance between fairy tale logic and a more contemporary, relatable emotional core. Director Vega and the extraordinary ensemble, along with the deft musicians, deliver a sometimes somber, visually textured retelling of George MacDonald’s 1872 tale, one that speaks to modern anxieties—trusting intuition, resisting rigidity, and finding invisible threads of support. The Princess and the Goblins is rich with care, craft, and a kind of theatrical sincerity that lingers.

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