ARABIAN NIGHTS. To 13 January.
Oxford
ARABIAN NIGHTS
adapted by Dominic Cooke
Creation Theatre Company at The Mirror Tent BMW Group Plant (Gate 7) To 13 January 2007
Tue-Fri 7.30pm Sat 2.30pm & 8pm also
10.30am 31 Dec
12pm 12-13 Dec, 10-11 Jan
1.30pm 20-22 Dec, 2-4 Jan
2.30pm 31 Dec no performance 25 Dec, 1, 8 Jan
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
TICKETS: 01865 766266
www.creationtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 December
Story-power at maximum theatrical wattage.
Light and dark battle it out as background to one of the world’s great story collections. A wise king soured by his beloved wife’s infidelity uses his power to marry and execute a woman every day. After 1,000 days Shahrazad, wise and resourceful, stops the endless, never-satisfied revenge with creative magic.
So the dark days are matched by 1,001 nights enlightened by stories whose narrative hooks keep King Shahrayar postponing the executioner’s axe. Dominic Cooke’s script (first seen at London’s Young Vic Theatre) develops this story alongside Shahrazad’s individual tales. The king denies the virtue of the resourceful women met early on. As he becomes imaginatively involved, drawn from his brooding, laughter and suspense make him ignore the later adventures’ faithless women.
Creation play in the much-travelled, much-mirrored Spiegeltent, redolent of a luxurious oriental pavilion. But its bare central platform makes an exposed disc of a stage, with a front audience row (seated cabaret-style round tables) whose noses almost spill under the actors’ feet.
Amazingly, Gari Jones’ 8-strong cast never put a foot wrong. Nor a facial expression, or bodily twirl. The rapid storytelling’s so inventive it takes an effort to realise how many separate decisions and how much invention has gone to make this variety and how much time must have gone to creating the fast, detailed parade of images.
Old friends are here; Ali Baba, Sindbad (in a fine puppet-scene). And less familiar folk, from the brief farce of Abu Hassan, pursued through life by his enormous fart, to the final extended tale in which Shahrazad all but throws the king’s errors in his face with the story of a wronged wife imprisoned over many years.
Animals, robbers and demons are created on stage; animal voices sound all around as the cast slip around the tent. The stage darkens into 2 halves as a curtain separates king and wife each night, then explodes into fullness, light and activity as the tales take over from the teller. The ending is quietly forceful, the whole show a tightly-disciplined, yet exuberant theatrical response to the Arabian Nights’ narrative variety and strength.
Cast: Marina Abdeen, Pepe Balderrama, Nuria Benet, Tom Edden, Amanda Haberland, Miranda Nolan, Gary Shelford, Paul Shelford
Director: Gari Jones
Designer: Sara Perks
Lighting: Simon Hutchings
Sound: Matt Eaton
Choreographer: Aidan Treays
Puppeteer: Polly Beestone
2006-12-15 01:14:21