CHARLOTTE'S WEB. To 10 July.

Young People

CHARLOTTE'S WEB
by E.B. White

Watershed Productions Tour to 10 July 2004
Runs 2hr One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 February at The Lowry Salford

Honest production of the story where the writing's on the web.Going around playwatching, you win some. And you lose quite a few. I suspect this touring show isn't seen as its best in the vast auditorium of the Lowry's Lyric Theatre, built to accommodate opera and ballet. Susie Caulcutt's set is marooned amid black curtains. It would all surely be a more sociable affair without the vast distances offered in Salford. Still, it was near enough full and thanks to Nick Beadle's lighting and sympathetic performances, the play won through.

It's not cutting-edge young people's theatre. The animals are prosaically portrayed without the movement expertise some companies would bring. But it's an honest telling, well presented.

When baby pig Wilbur, runt of the sow's litter, is saved by young Arable farm-girl Fern, he finds friends in a neighboiuring bbarn, growing up wide-eyed and trusting, unaware his generous rations are aimed at fattening him for a nearlyu datre with the bacon-slicer.

But humans - and what do they know down on the farm? - believe he's able to write words about himself - actually woven into her web by aspider-friends Chgarlotte. But spider's can't write, think humans - and what do theyt know?

If Wilbur can convert hisgrowing wonder-pig reputation into top prize at the County Fair it'll be a life-award. That is, guaranteeing him life.

Charlotte's down on her luck, not only being dismissed as illiterate by the humans (yet what do they know?), but putting her egg's hatching at risk to support Wilbur - the age-old love/duty v friendship recreated for young audiences.

Wilbur - 'I want love, friends and someone to play with' - and Charlotte contrast the naked-self-interest of the rat Templeton - a curmudgeon who can always be induced to lend a hand if he's shown how it will help him help himself.

Norette Leahy and Grant Stimpson make their contrasting characters sympathetic (Stimpson's rodent clearly a farmyard Fagin), while Timothy Platt gives Wilbur a wide-eyed, treble-inclined vulnerability.

There's a colourful County Fair, with revolving Ferris Wheel and fairy lights at night, and the potentially embarrassment of the Charlotte's brooad hatching - how do you show 500+ baby spiders without being comical or gruesnoe? - is solved with a colourful flight of soap-bubbles setting off to form their own, world-wide, webs.

If the mood's a trifle downbeat near the end, all's happily resolved by three young stay-at-home spiders named by Wilbur with affectionate memories of their mother, his friend and saviour.

So, while acknowledging the life-cycle involves change and death, this ends up a happy piece of theatre.

Mr Arable/Templeton: Grant Stimpson
Mrs Arable/Charlotte: Norette Leahy
Fern Arable/Goose/Edith: Annie Rowe
Avery Arable/Lurvy/Old Sheep: Kevin James
Wilbur: Timothy Platt
Narrator/Homer Zuckerman: Nicholas Collett

Director: Chris Wallis
Designer: Susie Caulcutt
Lighting: Nick Beadle
Music: Rick Jukes
Assistant director: Nicholas Collett

2004-02-19 16:31:26