"Pharaoh Serket and the Lost Stone of Fire": a riveting adventure for kids set in ancient Egypt

Theater Review |

Overheard during a recent performance of "Pharaoh Serket and the Lost Stone of Fire": "It's like Harry Potter!"

Right you are. And this world-premiere John Olive action play at Seattle Children's Theatre is also a little bit like an Indiana Jones flick (without the title character), and even more like the Disney musical "Aida" (without the sex or the singing).

Add in some opulent visuals, some genuine suspense and some good laughs, and you have an eventful yarn set in ancient Egypt that can keep a theater full of kids riveted.

Discerning adults may well be a bit impatient with the hocus-pocus plot and the deliberately broad acting in ACT Theatre head Kurt Beattie's splashy staging of the mystical mystery.

But you'd have to be a stone yourself not to appreciate the elaborate, faux-Egyptian visuals on display. Or the rip-roaring antics patterned on old B-movies and TV/radio serials that also barged up the Nile.

Olive has created a monarch kids can relate to. Young Serket (there actually existed a pharaoh or two with that name, but this one is fictional) is played forthrightly by Trick Danneker as a spoiled and wimpy potentate — who, of course, matures into a brave leader over the course of the show.

That's because Serket has to make some grown-up decisions fast — about whether to go to war with a neighboring nation, and what to do when Zalira (Hana Lass), a tribal woman with magical powers, urges him to go on a scary quest.

This bling-loving leader also has to decide whether to surrender up some of his jewelry to save his neck and his throne. (Hey, for a pharaoh that's not an easy choice.)

As the plot thickens, it grows clear that not everyone in Serket's inner circle is trustworthy. Even his doting sister (Renata Friedman), his beefy guard Captain Tau (Anthony Leroy Fuller) and his sage adviser Harkhuf (David Pichette) fall under suspicion.

When the story line gets more cogent, and the pacing picks up, the production delivers some genuine thrills that elicit bona fide gasps from young viewers. Helpful too is the comic relief, inserted by Tim Hyland in two small roles and by MJ Sieber. The latter draws laughs as Bakneb, a bumbling but useful scribe who is (literally) allergic to trouble.

Throughout, Jennifer Lupton's sets (enhanced by Rick Paulsen's lighting) are simply magnificent. Towering pillars, imposing stone tombs adorned with hieroglyphics, a craggy mountaintop, a bowels-of-the-earth cave, a sarcophagus with a mummy wearing the prized stone (which looks like a hunk of Kryptonite) ... There's enough ancient eye-candy here to put the Egyptian-themed Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas to shame.

The costumes by Melanie Taylor Burgess also do their job of evoking a historical epoch of great modern fascination, thanks to all those surviving ancient Egyptian artifacts and tombs dating back thousands of years.

"Pharaoh Serket and the Lost Stone of Fire" is the 100th world-premiere work to be presented by the Seattle Children's Theatre over its 34 years of existence. That's quite an accomplishment, by a treasured local arts institution that has enriched the lives so many young people with the gift of live theater.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com