CLASSIC `BABES' TODDLES INTO A.V.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Daily News Staff Writer

Familiar to two generations of American children as a Disney movie with Annette Funicello as the nursery-rhyme heroine and Ed Wynn as an eccentric toy maker, ``Babes in Toyland'' comes to the Antelope Valley this weekend in a different version.

Traveling theater group Troupe America's ``Babes'' sticks a little closer to composer Victor Herbert's original operetta than did the 1961 Disney version, the producer says.

``We don't have anybody who looks like Annette Funicello,'' producer Curt Wollan adds jokingly.

The musical will play at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Lancaster Performing Arts Center, 750 W. Lancaster Blvd. Tickets are $26 for adults, and $16 for those under age 18. For reservations, call the theater box office at [phone].

In this version, the lessons that Herbert was trying to impart come across more clearly than in the Disney version or the 1934 Hal Roach movie with Laurel and Hardy, Wollan said.

Those lessons: ``To get what you want you have to work for it. Things don't just drop into your lap,'' Wollan said. ``The children had run away because their parents had rules and they didn't like them. The parents' lesson is you can't expect children to be what you were, to fit into your mold. That was a big lesson back at the turn of the century, when Herbert penned this.''

This ``Babes in Toyland'' is a version written by Alice Hammerstein Mathias - daughter of composer Oscar Hammerstein - and William Mounte-Burke. It includes the famous ``Toyland, Toyland'' and ``March of the Toys'' tunes, plus additional songs from other Herbert operettas, with new lyrics.

In this version, a young brother and sister run away from home, feeling they're misunderstood and disciplined too harshly. They find themselves in Toyland, a world of talking toys. Chased by a detective hired by their parents to track them down, the children end up lost in a haunted forest.

The production is done by Troupe America, a 10-year-old Minneapolis group that tours shows through the United States and Canada. This is the first West Coast tour for ``Babes,'' though the production has toured through other parts of the country the past four Christmas seasons.

The 33-piece cast is joined by a five- or six-piece orchestra, backed by recorded musical tracks.