BATTINA AND THE MOON. To 15 January.
Sheffield
BATTINA AND THE MOON
by Richard Hurford
Crucible Studio To 15 January 2004
Mon-Thu 10.30am & 2pm
Runs 1hr 15min No interval
TICKETS: 0114 249 6000
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 January
Being what you want isn't always being yourself: a well-told tale.What's young, female and hangs upside-down in the wardrobe? Answer: A girl who thinks she's a bat. Tina sees herself as Battina - no vampire, just someone looking for space to be what she wants rather than the well-ordered child Mr and Mrs Stickley, sticklers (you see) for cleanliness and ordered lives, wish. Battina's fantastic voyage is effectively a compressed 3-act play, imaginatively shaped and written with wit and economy by Richard Hurford.
Summing up what Battina, in her skin-hugging black and bat-wings, hates is the girlish pink mother foists on her. Instead, she longs for the Moon, and when Moon appears, transporting the girl through the skies for a lunar party, it's only natural to find this imagined world transforms her cartoon-like earthly parents - dad (thankfully deprived of his world's-worst-wig contender) becoming the silvery evening-frocked Queen of the Night Moon, with spick-and-span mum rolling in as a furry Ursa Major.
During this central scene, bringing new disorder into her life no-one's sent galactic invites to the Moon-party - Battina starts realising the care underlying the tedium of earthbound domestic normality, leading to the shocking moment on her return where former bat-girl affectionately clutches an item of pink. In the action's compression, we have to take on trust how her parents come to accept human inconvenience over the multiple house-rules which have dictated daily lives to date.
But it's right the girl and her experiences should be the focus, and Hurford's metaphor for childhood frustrations and explorations works well for 3-7s; the key moment of self-realisation comes when Battina realises she can't fly, that she's not the bat she'd wish-fulfilled herself into believing she was.
There are strong specific moments in Karen Simpson's production parents cruelly snipping Battina's planetary module hanging from the ceiling, for example. But if you have songs, you need better singing and Moon doesn't need to be a silver-tongued cliché to provide a more vocally-varied, less raucous-toned presence. Yet this remains an elegantly-staged fable to compare, for example, with Ayckbourn's (older-aimed) Invisible Friends as a picture of the value and limits of fantasy.
Cast and full credits not available
Director: Karen Simpson
Designer: Paul Willis
Composer: Andrew Dodge
2004-01-13 11:50:00