By Janelle Gelfand
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Audrey Luna (left) plays Gretel, and Elizabeth Pojanowski portrays Hansel, in CCM's production of Hansel and Gretel. University of Cincinnati/MARK LYONS

Mom and dad have been laid off, Hansel and Gretel are latchkey kids, and they get lost in an urban jungle - where the Sandman offers them a joint. Oh, and don't count on them finding a gingerbread house in the woods, either.

"Fairy tales don't just function as good stories - they function, in part, as a road map for children to confront some of the things they have to confront in life," says Thomas de Mallet Burgess, director of an update of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music this weekend.

The production, says de Mallet Burgess, is about the rites of passage that children go through as they grow up, gain independence from their parents and go through typical teenage rebellion.

"It's also about poverty and the effects of poverty on the family," he says.

So, Hansel and Gretel are lazy, spoiled preteens who live with their poor, struggling parents in a city neighborhood.

IF YOU GO

What: Hansel and Gretel, an opera by Engelbert Humperdinck and Adelheid Wette (performed in English). Thomas de Mallet Burgess, director; Mark Gibson, conductor When: 8 p.m. today through Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday Where: Corbett Auditorium, University of Cincinnati Tickets: $25; $15 students; 556-4183 or Web site

"I don't see the real issue as being the lack of food - it is the children's greed to consume, and the parents' inability to keep up with that," de Mallet Burgess says.

The siblings get lost, fall asleep and dream of a beautiful house in a posh suburb, where there's a lovely grandmother. Granny, of course, turns out to be something much more sinister: the witch.

Many people consider a children's show "something fluffy, lovely and Disney," he says. But this Hansel and Gretel doesn't aim to do that. The director's idea was to make the 19th-century opera, based on the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, relevant to people today, in Cincinnati. The time is the present, in a town "not unlike our own."

"I was struck that in the music, as well as there being that incredible beauty and sense of playfulness in the music - there was also a real darkness," he says.

Ironically, the children experience the worst evils, not in the city, but in an affluent suburb. The children encounter dangers right out of the evening news.

When Hansel and Gretel defeat the witch (they stuff her into a large, barbecue-size oven) and free the "gingerbread children," they gain some sense of independence, de Mallet Burgess says.

But is it rated PG?

"It's definitely for kids preteens and up; younger, if kids are reasonably mature," he says. "I think sometimes as adults we're kind of overprotective about children. Children are very good about knowing what is make-believe and what is real."

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com