The cast of the Children’s Theatre Company’s 2023 production of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical, which opens Saturday, November 11, 2023 at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, MN. Photo by Glenn Stubbe Photography.

Scroll through the virtual box office for the Children’s Theatre Company production of Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical and a theme quickly becomes evident: “Limited Availability”. As of this writing, 23 of the performance dates bear this advisory – not bad for a show that CTC has mounted 11 times since hosting the first premiere of the show in 1994.

If you don’t know the story, the musical with a very long-winded title has its roots in 1954. That’s the year when Theodore Geissel – an English PhD program dropout-turned-cartoonist-turned-children’s book author – received an unusual challenge. On May 24, 1954, Life Magazine ran a feature with an eye-catching title: “Why Can’t My Child Read?”, with the central thesis that children’s books were boring.

Over at the book publisher Houghton Mifflin, William Ellsworth Spaulding (director of the education division) decided to try and do something about it. First, he compiled a list of 348 words that he thought were essential for 1st Graders to know. Next, he contacted Theodore Geissel with a two-fold challenge:

1. Trim the list to 250.
2. “Bring back a book children can’t put down.”

To that point, Theodore Geissel’s career had run a varied course. After leaving a PhD program at Oxford University, he worked as a magazine illustrator and cartoonist, illustrated advertising campaigns, and penned a few political cartoons. In 1937, he published his first children’s book after more than 20 rejections, penned and published a few more books, then saw his career entirely taken over by the Second World War. After penning more than 400 political cartoons, he became the head of the U.S. Army’s Animation Department of the First Motion Picture Unit, working on training and propaganda films. After the war, he penned a few more books – notably 1955’s Horton Hears a Who! – but was flirting with Hollywood screenwriting.

Spaulding’s call was an inflection point: Geissel, writing under his pen name Dr. Seuss, penned and illustrated what would become one of his two most famous works: The Cat in the Hat (1957) – followed immediately by How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957).

Fast forward to 1991, past the beloved Chuck Jones and Ben Washam animated adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and millions of books sold. After Geissel passed away on September 24, 1991, his widow authorized several new adaptations of his work, starting with a new animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! narrated by Walter Matthau and working from Geissel’s book illustrations. Another, which saw the light of day in 1994, was a stage musical adaptation of the same book, commissioned by the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis.

Here’s a look at CTC’s current production:

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Amy Donahue

Amy Donahue is a staff reviewer at the Twin Cities Arts Reader. She interned with the magazine during the summer of 2017, served as a guest contributor while studying abroad in Europe that fall, and has moved up to regular old reviewing. She served as interim Editor-in-Chief in 2023.

She admits to being at least 50% terrified of contemporary German opera.

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