Grimm and bear it

Think back for a moment, and try to remember your favorite childhood story. Whether you heard it at bedtime or while seated on the kindergarten carpet, it was probably as comfortable and familiar as a favorite blanket. Back before you got old and life got complicated, such tales featured simple storylines and clear-cut take-home morals: Charlotte's Web could be read as a celebration of interspecies friendship, not a treatise on the ills of factory farming, and there was no need to speculate whether unregulated deforestation practices would eliminate the natural habitat of the beloved beasts of Where the Wild Things Are. But with age comes wisdom, so we're pretty excited to see the grown-up twists in Grimm, a collection of short plays that's getting its world premiere presented by Company One. Running July 16 through August 14 at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts (527 Tremont Street, Boston, 617.426.5000), the show intends to "remix and re-imagine" classic fables from the Brothers Grimm. Each of seven local playwrights and authors was commissioned to write a 10- to 30-minute play inspired by a different famed fairy tale, from "Snow White" to "The Frog King," "Hansel and Gretel" to "Little Red Riding Hood." But the individual writers got to decide how close to hew to the source material, and frankly, we're pretty confident we're going to see some wild new takes on those traditional tales. After all, not only were they created by some award-winning Boston playwrights, but joining the mix is Massachusetts author Gregory Maguire, who created a literary cottage industry out of this very concept with books like Wicked and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. Among Grimm's greatest (and raciest) departures is probably Red by playwright John Kuntz, which seems to retain only shades of its inspiration, "Little Red Riding Hood." It's filled with a "sexual tension" says Kuntz, who studied numerous versions of the tale as told in different cultures to extract common themes. Instead of depicting an innocent Pollyanna ambushed by an incognito animal, Red sets "a dark S&M fantasy" in a dingy basement, turning the damsel-versus-dog dynamic into a role-reversing power play (and presumably giving new meaning to the inevitable "happy ending"). We're not sure our kindergarten teacher would approve, but these full-grown fables have us hungry like the wolf. For show times and tickets ($15-$38), visit companyone.org.