The title of this post says it all. Go see Shrek: The Musical. It's playing at Segerstrom (Center for the Arts) in Costa Mesa through Sunday, October 16 (dark on Monday.) If you get Goldstar, they have discounted tickets.

All I can say is that the girls and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire musical. Really. We weren't even tempted to leave at intermission, even though it was a school night, and they really should have been asleep. Regular readers of this blog may remember that we saw another spectacle musical at the then-called OC Performing Arts Center around this time last year, and I wished we had left at intermission, I disliked the performance that much (girls totally agreed.)

Simply put, there is live life in Shrek. It's not so perfectly staged and costumed that you might as well be watching the movie. You could tell there was acting & live singing and dancing going on on stage. It was real, honest-to-goodness theater.

We laughed at the farts and burps and were amazed by some of the staging and the puppet that is Dragon. And the  All three of us really enjoyed "Let Your Freak Flag Fly," the theme of the misful-fairy tale characters. Evil Lord Farquaad is, through the magic of the stage and really good knee pads, literally 3 feet tall. And while no one can out Eddie Murphy Eddie Murphy, Donkey's pronimciations were wry and amusing.

So as long as your child is in Kindergarten and can quietly and happily sit through the play, go. This is one to see.

Segerstrom: 714-556-2787 or www.SCFTA.org.