Tina Landau’s world premiere of Beauty, currently playing at La Jolla Playhouse, has been generating a lot of buzz, as smitten audience members rave about it to their friends.

The play begins with the all-too-familiar words “Once upon a time,” but doesn’t necessarily end with “And they lived happily ever after.” Landau has the guts to update a modern, beloved classic by insinuating that Rose (Kelli O’Hara), our peachy-complexioned sleeping beauty, dares to question the motives of her Prince Charming. Just because some strange urban dweller from the city plants a kiss on her lips while she is dozing doesn’t give him any special rights. Or does it?

A middle-aged, grey-haired fairy by the name of Constance (Lisa Harrow) invites the audience into Landau’s version of Sleeping Beauty, setting up the central mystery that has been concealed from Rose. Many years after the princess has fallen into her extended doze, James (Jason Danieley) comes along. He’s a city boy who just can’t get any shut-eye because, every time he tries, he dreams of a beautiful maiden who seems to be beckoning from afar for a smooch from his young and eager-to-please lips. He travels from modern urban blight to medieval blight, taking a peculiar path choreographed amongst huge, metal, moveable forests that set a dark, cold barrier between him and his unknown beauty.

Meanwhile, Rose keeps waking from her bed, draped in diaphanous white, to ask why. Why did her father not allow her free passage outside of the castle? Why did she always have to be chaperoned? Why were all the spinning wheels in the kingdom set aflame? Why did her blood mother place a curse upon the king?

The audience gets caught up like a child in the fairytale as paths close behind James, eager to find the woman in his dreams at any cost. And with every step that James takes, the author reminds us that we shouldn’t seek validation in another’s eyes. Does this kind of questioning rob us of our playful, childlike romanticism and pit us against modern tenets of women’s rights and equality amongst the races, whether you are witch, fairy, man or woman?

Instead of “happily ever after,” the author seems to have brought us to the altar of a joyful couple about to be wed to remind us that physical beauty will soon fade and that we must accept our betrothed, even if awakened with a kiss after a zillion years, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health — and don’t forget about that all too important prenuptial agreement.

If you’re willing to give up your childhood fairytales and trade them in for tough love and reality, allow your eyes and ears to feast upon this offering of Beauty. If you’re not, see the show anyway, and keep your copy of Sleeping Beauty tucked under your pillow and permit yourself the dream of “they lived happily ever after.”

Beauty plays through Oct. 19, 2003 at La Jolla Playhouse. Call (858) 550-1010 for ticket information.