ARTHUR. THE STORY OF A KING. To 11 October.
ARTHUR. THE STORY OF A KING.
by Wee Stories
Wee Stories theatre Tour to 11 October 2003
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 September at King's Theatre Edinburgh
Theatre's Harry Potter - magical and for everyone from young child to grandparent.If you're anywhere near Aberdeen, Glasgow, Inverness - or next spring's promised tour to Coventry, Oxford and other English venues, book for this show. Book early, book if you like, often. But, book.
The play draws on a trio of theatre traditions. There's full-throated performance, with projections and music, from Carmina Burana blasted out in battle, to a plangent solo oboe. Then there's Variety, with its interplay of perfomer and audience, plus arguments between cast members adding to the humour.
Finally, Arthur evocatively uses the shoestring resonance of Theatre in Education, clarifying ideas with economic emphasis. And it all starts with a pile of Kellogg's Cornflakes packets.
As these undergo origami into crowns and visored helmets, there's magic in the ingenuity, and humour. Arthur is a learning process; for the performers, apparently, and for audiences in fact - though without any obvious didacticism landing heavily on our plates in the mix Wee Stories dish up.
The value of reading, the uncertainty of historical accounts, and wealth of varied folk-tales are in there, together with the story's implications that peace is better than fighting - something emphasised at the final curtain with a last laugh involving a couple of metal trays, and a plastic bag.
Skilfully performed, the production made a virtually rustle-free zone of the King's for two hours, with an audience consisting of a wide adult age-range and children, some so young they might actually have been hearing 'O Fortuna' (the bit of Orff's Carmina Burana) for the first time.
Fun and thrills co-mingle. Petty kings (represented initially by mini-cereal packs) are seen as miniature candles beautifully arranged along the Round Table's periphery. Yet the production can accommodate a cheap pun about (k)night lights without destroying the visual poetry.
There's tremendous detail in trhe telling and the staging. So, the women musicians behind a centre-stage gauze both add to the other-worldly impact of the score and place both women and artsin the background of what is, if not a dog-eat-dog, certainly a man-fight-man, society. Alternative values need the wisdom and ourage of an Arthurt if they are to emerge.
Then there's Merlin - magically represented as an old man by a red table-cloth gathered up in Cannon's hand, limping along on a candle-stick support. His banishment, for warning against Guinevere as Arthur's wife, points up the battle between wisdom and emotional impulse. All human life and experience is in the myth and emerges naturally in this retelling.
At times the storytelling is joky, then strangely moving; with occasional encouragement of audience rsponses this seems like Scotland's answer to the National Theatre of Brent (which is not, of course, the same as being Scotland's National Theatre). And when the final, fateful battle - pre-figured several times - occurs there's an epic thrill to two men in dinner jackets miming a sword-fight.
Good theatre on this large-scale for young people is infrequent. Something as rich, strange, yet accessible as this is very rare. Simple minds and sophisticated alike can find an immense amount here. It's a show to treasure, and congratulations to Scotland's Touring Consortium of large-scale theatres for making such outstanding work for young people a part of their season.
Performers:
Andy Cannon, Iain Johnstone, David Trouton
Vocalist: Alyth Mc Cormack
Designer: Rebecca Minto
Ligfhting: Michael Brown
Musical Director: David Trouton
2003-09-20 17:40:00