Imagine Law and Order, but with a very big twist, and you’ll understand the premise of the Niles West Theater Department’s latest production. Instead of your run-of-the-mill murderers, the central figures in “Law and Order:Fairy Tale Unit” are fairytale characters.

Theatre director Andrew Sinclair explained the play as being a children’s parody of the well-known TV show.

“This fast-paced, funny children’s play parodies the classic Law and Order television show using famous children’s story characters,” Sinclair said. “It follows detectives HD (Humpty Dumpty) and Cindy (Cinderella) as they track down who destroyed the three pigs’ houses. Along the way, we meet several modern versions of fairy tale characters and work with the lawyers to solve the crime.”

Many hours were put into making this show perfect by students and staff members alike.

“We have been rehearsing for a little over a month, and the stage crew has been working on the sets, costume, lighting, props and sound for that amount of time as well,” Sinclair said. “We meet each day after school and on Saturdays.”

Behind the scenes, students have been working hard as well.

“I’m house manager, which means I’m in charge of the ushers. I also make sure that everyone who bought a ticket has a seat,” crew member and junior Leah Nano said. “For this show, there were a lot of late nights because of how short of a time frame we really had to build the set. This show is a really fun and different show than the other ones in our season, so I’m glad I got to be a part of it.”

Kids work extremely hard in building the sets. They manage to work diligently and have fun at the same time.

“I worked on the production and running crew for this show. I work with scenic crew, the constructing and painting the set before the show. It is hard work, and we all put in a lot of hours. Everyone has to be very focused, attentive, and willing to work hard and diligently. This show is our children’s show, so we have some young kids come from elementary schools. They make it really fun because they have very strong reactions and opinions towards the show,” junior Violet Gilbert said.

Be sure to catch the play this weekend in the Blackbox Theater.