YAKIMA, Wash. -- "Shrek the Musical" is big.

I mean, of course it's big. You take a blockbuster cartoon comedy about an ogre, a princess and talking donkey and stage it as a live-action musical, you're probably not shooting for that minimalist Spalding Gray aesthetic. You're going to have full costumes, expensive prosthetics and makeup, ornate sets, the whole thing.

"It definitely feels like a spectacle," director Stephen Sposito said in a phone interview last week. "It's a show that's large in every way."

The musical, which debuted on Broadway in 2008 after a trial run at Seattle's Fifth Avenue Theatre, opens its 2011 U.S. tour at the Capitol Theatre with three performances over two days. It's the first in the 2011-2012 Capitol "Best of Broadway" series, which also will include "Monty Python's Spamalot," "The New Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein" and "In the Heights."

Based on the original "Shrek" film from 2001, the show was nominated for eight Tony Awards in 2009, winning for best costume design. It includes all of the characters audiences have grown to love and all new music -- the lone exception being the song "I'm A Believer," which was added to the show in 2009 during its run in London.

"The music in the movie was so important, so iconic," Sposito says. "So this is our nod to that great song."

His experience as assistant director through the musical's Seattle beginnings, its Broadway run and the previous tour has given Sposito a comfort level with the show, despite the all-new cast that will open it in Yakima. To him, the key to "Shrek the Musical" is its tone: light-hearted, brassy and totally removed from any notion of hoity-toity theater.

"You look for ways to theatrical-ize it and expand the piece, things the stage does well," he says. "It's a fun night at the theater. There's going to be burps and farts. It's just casual fun. It shouldn't be intimidating at all."

That's one of the things that drew Liz Shivener to the show. Having just finished a tour as Belle in another cartoon adaptation, "Beauty and the Beast," she knew that, done right, animated characters can translate quite well to the stage.

"Cartoons are a heightened existence, so they lend themselves to the theater where things have to be dramatic and heightened and intense," she says.

That said, Shivener was looking for a character that was a little less princess-on-a-pedestal and a little more relatable. Princess Fiona in "Shrek," try as she might to be Belle from "Beauty and the Beast," is definitely more relatable, she says.

"She's feisty and fun and quirky and kind of nerdy," Shivener says. "Princess Fiona is just a blast and, to be quite honest, a little more like me."

Sposito chose Shivener, leading man Lukas Poost and the rest of the cast from more than 2,000 actors who auditioned.

"It's always hard to find funny people who are good actors," he says.

But he thinks he's found that in Shivener.

"Liz has a great physical sense and a great sense of humor," he says. "She also brings a sensitivity to it. You really believe her."

Both he and Shivener were similarly gushing in their praise of Poost, whose credits include serious fare such as "The Crucible" and more off-the-wall plays such as "Bat Boy."

"Lukas brings an incredible warmth to Shrek -- he's an ogre, but he has a huge heart," Sposito says. "He's also very funny."

Acting ability like that is important, even in a big spectacle of a show like Shrek, because at its heart it's still a simple story of self-discovery, he says.

"It's about something everyone deals with: finding your way in the world," Sposito says. "Everyone feels like an outsider; that's part of growing up and fitting into society and becoming an adult. One of the show's major messages is that the things that make you different are the best things about you."

That such a message can be delivered in the context of a story about an ogre, a princess and a talking donkey is testament to the original film and to the musical's book and songs by David Lyndsay-Abaire.

"It's done in a completely zany, madcap way," Sposito says. "There's puppets and makeup and fart jokes. It's fun for the whole family. But it's also smart. It's a silly, zany story that has a huge heart to it."

* Pat Muir can be reached at 509-577-7693 or pmuir@yakimaherald.com.