Chicken Little story inspires a tongue-in-beak puppet opera, in Italian

Not every chicken has a fan club. But then, not every chicken is La Pulcina Piccola, known in English as Chicken Little. La Pulcina is the star of an opera, "Love's Fowl," which is a spinoff in Italian of the Chicken Little story. It is presented by a troupe of avian puppets made out of clothespins and styrofoam balls. English supertitles translate the Italian, and the puppets, being only 4 inches high, are projected onto large screens.

"Think rock 'n' roll," says show creator Susan J. Vitucci, on the phone from New York.

"Love's Fowl," which comes to Cambridge this week, is the

unlikeliest of operas, and it is a cult hit. The music was written by Henry Krieger, who composed the scores for "Dreamgirls," "Side Show," and "The Tap Dance Kid." The show has been profiled on Public Radio International's "This American Life." It has played all over the country and is beloved by small children, college students, and elderly opera fans alike. There's a website, a newsletter, a soundtrack, a T-shirt, even La Pulcina's "translated" diaries. And, of course, that fan club (Gli Ammiratori della Pulcinina). It all stems from a puppet show Vitucci created in 1984, meant to be a birthday present for her young nephew. "It was funny," she says, "but it didn't really work. My nephew got Legos, and that was the end of the story."

A few years later, required to make a 10-minute presentation in an Italian class she was taking, she thought of the show. She translated it into Italian and performed it in front of her fellow students. "I absolutely killed with it," she says. Somehow, in Italian, it took on new resonance. "I knew this was something special. `The gods have kissed me!' I said."

Vitucci began to present it around New York; Krieger attended a performance, and he asked if she would consider adding music. The two collaborated, with Vitucci writing the lyrics and Krieger the score. "It has grown from there," she says.

The story begins with the Chicken Little fable we're all familiar with: Hit in the head by an acorn, a chicken thinks the sky is falling and goes on a quest to tell the king. But in "Love's Fowl," when the confusion is cleared up and the chicken returns to her farm, she realizes she can't stay there. She has discovered the wide world.

La Pulcina heads to the big city, where she falls into a doomed relationship with a cockfighter. When that ends, she finds a career onstage. (Her signature role is Richard III.) From there, she gets involved in politics, goes to sea, travels to Egypt, and so on. Along the way, she finds love and tragedy and sings stirringly about them both.

The combination of broad comedy and deep emotion (a cast of clothespins, writ large on-screen, performs the opening Busby Berkeley number; La Pulcina sings an aching lament after her soul mate, Cock Robin, is killed), of high culture and lowly styrofoam, draws many people to "Love's Fowl."

"It reaches the audience on multiple levels," says Hilary Pfeifer, a sculptor living in Portland, Ore., who is a fan of the show. "Children can follow the story, but adults, too, can appreciate the subtle humor there, especially the fine line they draw between the silly and the serious.

"I think the most endearing part is that [Vitucci] can do so much with such simple craft-store materials. This show just wouldn't work as well if the puppets were fancy and complex. . . . It adds a nice charm that goes along nicely with the story, which is quite charming in and of itself."

Vitucci and pianist David Schaefer perform the show together, singing all the parts. "We play with conventions of cowboy music, Gilbert and Sullivan, we steal wherever we possibly can. Not steal -- we do tributes," says Vitucci, who attended Yale drama school for theater administration.

"Love's Fowl" is part of a long tradition, according to John Bell, a puppeteer and assistant professor of performing arts at Emerson College. "Puppet operas are really old," he says. "Haydn wrote operas for puppets. There's a puppet theater in Salzburg that specializes in puppet operas. Recently, Julie Taymor has directed large-scale puppet operas."

But, with its live performance and homemade quality, this production is also unique. "[Vitucci's] inventing the form as she goes," Bell says. "She didn't study traditional puppet theater for 10 years. She just went in with all her spirit and gusto and said, `Yeah! I'm gonna do an opera about a chicken!' "

That spirit and gusto animate the show, which, Vitucci says, is a world away from the cynicism often found in theater today.

"There's a very simple joy," she says. "It gives me an opportunity to go to a place inhabited by a very sweet spirit and to communicate in a very florid way. Sometimes it's way over the top, but it works."

And, like all fables, it has its lessons. "This character is intrepid," Vitucci says. "Every setback is an opportunity. Not that she's not sad or upset about the setback, but she goes, `Boy oh boy, am I upset about this, but what's around the corner?' The lesson is in letting go and enjoying delight."

Devra First can be reached at dfirst@globe.com.