ANGELA CARTER'STHE MAGIC TOYSHOP Bryony Lavery. Shared Experience, Oxford/Dublin

Oxford

ANGELA CARTER'S THE MAGIC TOYSHOP
by Bryony Lavery

Shared Experience Theatre Company at Oxford Playhouse To 13 October 2001
Runs 2hr 10min One interval

Review Timothy Ramsden 11 October

Once again, Shared Experience demonstrates how a good novel can take new life as an integral theatre piece.Melanie's 15 and imagines herself into womanhood through her parents' wedding photos and by clumsily wrapping her naked body in her mother's bridal dress, which she accidentally ruins.

By this time Lavery's adaptation has taken us well into Melanie's mind, for Hannah Watkins narrates her thoughts and fears directly to us. We know less of younger brother Jonathan (Jonathan Broadbent) and child-minded sister Victoria (Harriette Ashcroft).

As if predicted by the despoiled wedding-dress, when Melanie's parents die in a plane crash her bookish home is swapped for the rough world of Uncle Philip (John Stahl), a toymaker and showman.

Which could make for a lively contrast in lifestyle, but Philip is a domestic bully who relates only to Melanie's brother. Jonathan retreats from her to a high perch on Liz Cooke's set with its multiple shipboard images. Melanie gradually develops an affectionate relationship with Damian O' Hare's Finn, but the final stormy revelation is the incestuous love of Philip's wife Maggie (Penny Layden) for her brother Francie (Simon Walter).

Rebecca Gatward's production makes this the culmination of the production's marine references. Philip's discovery of the pair turns the stage into a shipwreck. Yet the moment's also constructive, breaking Maggie's years of oppressed silence.

Sculpted throughout by Adam Silverman's lighting, this is another of Shared Experience's imaginative novel stagings; a dramatisation that is also a theatricalisation. This company once again exposes the heart and mind of the book, not merely the outer form.

At Oxford I tried two seats. Toyshop's magic worked better from Row H than Row L. The proscenium arch became more apparent further back, tending to make the narrative contact less intimate and the theatricality more obviously artificial. But it's a small point in a fine production, with confident ensemble performances, which deserves to follow previous Shared Experience adaptations in finding a new life in the near future.

Victoria: Harriette Ashcroft
Jonathan: Jonathan Broadbent
Margaret: Penny Layden
Finn: Damian O' Hare
Uncle Philip: John Stahl
Francie/Mrs Rundle: Simon Walter
Melanie: Hannah Watkins

Director: Rebecca Gatward
Designer: Liz Cooke
Lighting: Adam Silverman
Composer: Gary Yershon

2001-10-12 06:46:24