Leslie Arden’s the princess & the Handmaiden is a Grimm Brothers-type tale filled with tuneful music and clever lyrics. This premiere production would be hard to top.

The only trouble? The songs are often too sophisticated for its target audience, children five and up.

Girlhood friends, the high-born princess (Regan Thiel) and her handmaiden (Tracy Michailidis), are driven apart by jealousy and a lack of understanding of the other’s world. When roles are switched, each discovers that the grass isn’t always greener in the other’s field.

Tricking the princess, the handmaiden takes her place in a kingdom to which she’s been sent to cure an ailing king (a basso-voiced Sharron Matthews, doubling as narrator) and wed the prince. The princess, meanwhile, ends up in the hut of the reclusive shepherd Conrad (Jonathan Tan).

Under Allen MacInnis’s direction, the show is first-rate, from the talented cast to David Boechler’s design that includes a movable forest, lit by Bonnie Beecher, as well as creative costumes by Dana Osborne. Love the segmented hoop-skirts that help transform the chorus into sheep with Scottish accents.

Then there’s Arden’s catchy music. Witty lyrics with smooth double, triple and internal rhymes have older viewers smiling constantly. The tunes give added texture to characters and story, but I watched (and heard) younger viewers become restless during musical numbers.

Even so, the narrative, which weaves in the occasional message, works for them. At nearly 90 minutes, though, some kids might be tired by the end.