GIVE THIS MOUSE ALL THE COOKIES!

So wildly inventive that even the
grown-ups can’t believe their eyes

Matías Kruse and Diego Rivera-Rodriguez

The Young People’s Theatre of Chicago opens its new season with Jody Davidson’s adaptation of the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by writer Laura Joffe Numeroff and illustrator Felicia Bond. Skewing to a younger-than-usual audience, the play opens with a young Boy (Diego Rivera-Rodriguez), who has managed to get out of visiting a grumpy aunt, and, much to his delight, has been allowed to stay at home, all alone. Not that the Boy has plans for mischief. He’s just gotten his hands on the newest issue of Jungleman of the Amazon, and his mother has left a batch of freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies. All the Boy wants to do is lie on the grass in the backyard and read his comic while munching on the best cookies in the world.

Diego Rivera-Rodriguez

But this is not to be. While in the yard, the Boy is visited by a little Mouse (Matías Kruse). The Mouse has wandered far from his home and is hungry. His nose sniffs towards the bag. He’s such a little mouse, thinks the Boy. Surely one cookie couldn’t hurt. The Boy generously hands the Mouse a cookie, but the Mouse makes another request: he couldn’t possibly eat a cookie without milk. Could the Boy spare him a glass of milk as well? The two head into the house, and that’s when everything goes haywire.

Diego Rivera-Rodriguez and Matías Kruse

Let’s talk about Shane Cinal’s set and Amy Gilman’s props. No, really, we must talk about the set and the props. Cinal’s set is a candy-colored kitchen with an island and a counter. A refrigerator occupies pride of place in the center, with cabinets on one side. Drawings and lists are affixed to its doors. The scale, however, is off. Everything is about 25% larger than it should be. And with just that one adjustment, the quite tall Diego Rivera-Rodriguez is reduced to preteen size. The cleverness continues with the props as they change size when they move from the Boy to the Mouse. Sometimes the actors use the furniture to obscure the switch, but sometimes it requires lightning-fast timing, most impressively in the first switch when the boy-sized glass of milk turns into a giant glass for the mouse. Thanks to some sharp misdirection, the switch in props happens in plain sight. The details are incredible. Even the Boy’s book is fully illustrated in a comic-appropriate style (I peeked at it after the show). As Mouse’s demands mount, so does the inventiveness on display—Mouse’s delight, and subsequent dance, with his own reflection (James Hisanaga) is an especially charming moment—reaching an exhilarating peak in a bravura cleaning sequence that channels the manic energy of Chuck Jones’s Tom & Jerry shorts. The perfectly deployed music and musical cues, curated by director Randy White, add to the feeling that we’re watching a live version of a cartoon plucked from the golden age of American animation.

Diego Rivera-Rodriguez and Matías Kruse

There’s even a wickedly clever blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Sondheim reference thrown in. What more could one want?

Matías Kruse and Diego Rivera-Rodriguez

The actors are terrific, throwing themselves into madness with abandon and racing around the set with the boundless energy of youth. This is an exceedingly high-energy show, the kind that probably requires energy bars before and hydration packs after. They’re also fine comedians with excellent timing. Rivera-Rodriguez nails the exasperated panic of a kid who realizes he’s in a world of trouble, and Kruse gives Mouse a sweet innocence that makes all his demands adorable instead of annoying.

Matías Kruse and James Hisanaga

This is YPT’s fourth four-star show in a row, all in the past year. A streak unmatched by any other theatre company in Chicago. You think it’s hard putting on a play? Try putting on a play for an audience of 4- to 8-year-old children. Given that they were enraptured by the proceedings—when they weren’t squealing in joy—for all seventy minutes, I fail to see how this could be categorized as anything other than a smashing success.

Diego Rivera-Rodriguez and Matías Kruse

But it was not just the kiddos who were rapt. After the show, I waited for at least a good ten minutes to clarify a couple of matters with the director—he’d been mobbed by the children and their parents. From what I could overhear, the questions were along the lines of “How did you do that?” And most were coming from the adults in the room.

Matías Kruse

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photos by Steven Townshend | Distant Era

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
Young People’s Theatre of Chicago
Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. in Chicago
approximately 65 minutes
Sat. at 11; Sun. at 11 & 1:30
ends on October 25, 2026
for tickets (from $32.95; $22.95 for children under 12), call 773.404.7336 or visit Young People’s Theatre of Chicago

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago

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