CLOUDCUCKOOLAND. To 27 April.

Tour.

CLOUDCUCKOOLAND
words by Stephen Sharkey music by Alex Silverman.

Tour to 27 April 2008.
Runs 1hr 15min No interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 24 February at Riverside Studios Hammersmith.

Aristophanes and ecology descend from the heights.
This production tours under “The Onassis Programme for the Performance of Greek Drama at Oxford University”. So, hang on to your hats, all who’re 7+, for a non-lullaby of birdland. Into Swift (an ever-pleasant and energetic Georgina Philip) and flatmate McFly’s bored modern life of plastic food and furniture flies an avian escaping a pair of twitchers (who I’d imagined were merely zealous bird-detectors, but here have fatal intentions towards the feathered flier).

Invited to a conference of the birds for foiling the twitchers, the human pair are assailed by the aged, commanding and distinctly non-extinct Dodo. Their fates vary. McFly, wearing his chicken-nugget fast-food shirt ends up foiled and basted (moral, always change out of work-clothes when you get home).

Swift joins the birds, suggesting they escape this fug-filled world by building a new home in the sky, its name being no surprise to any Aristophanic 7-year old who recalls the show’s title. Ancient avians above the clouds didn’t have to contend with jet-aircraft exhausts, so Swift lights upon an apt form of fundamental retaliation on the environmental foulers down below.

This show carries a hefty eco-message, you’ll detect, even resorting to drawing-boards to show how birds developed from former Earth-ruling dinosaurs and making a point close to the heart of every chicken-bit averse 7-year old, that birds could hardly make a worse job of government than human leaders. Blair, Bush etc appear as caricature drawings while Gordon Brown also gets a more-than-decent personal appearance via a suddenly dour-voiced Charles de Bromhead.

However much it means to the young, you can see the right-on parents approving right through. What anyone can enjoy is the colour and theatrical vim; Helen Eastman’s production keeps moving bits of Ellen Dowell’s fragmented set around, there’s a chase through the tight-packed audience by three actors playing accordion, flute etc and Alex Silverman builds a bright score neatly round harp and percussion.

It’s active, interactive (with audience ideas for an ideal city being read-out), colourful, and well-performed with some amusing bird impressions, visual rather than vocal. All together, it means well and it’s well done.

Swift: Georgina Philip.
McFly/Gordon Brown: Charles de Bromhead.
Slender/Flamingo/Robin: Fiona J Keats.
Dodo/Dave: Nick Kellington.
Owl/Raven: Dafydd Huw James.

Director: Helen Eastman.
Designer: Ellen Dowell.
Lighting: Richard Godin.
Associate director: Robin Norton-Hale.

2008-02-27 23:35:01