CRY WOLF. To 1 November.
Tour
CRY WOLF
adapted by Mike Shepherd with additional writing/lyrics by Anna Maria Murphy, Carl Grose, Craig Johnson, Emma Rice, The Baghdaddies
Kneehigh Theatre Company Tour to 1 November 2003
Young audiences can cheer loudly in relief or mockery; the volume-up response to this show by Oxford's youthful audience was enthusiastic admiration. And well deserved.If you can't always get what you want, you find it impossible to stop someone else following their nature. That's the point of the first, marine, story Kneehigh tell. Easy to think it's as inventive as theatre can get. Until you see what this company does with Red Riding-Hood after the interval.
Kneehigh's individual style creates new force in the idea of play. It's directed and designed by old Kneehigh hands but you'd hardly think so, given the freewheeling, apparent spontaneity of events. Somehow, in Kneehigh productions, performers change costumes, move around unnoticed, emerging suddenly in the right place and time, a seamless ensemble.
This show, under different titles, has been seen in various versions, in part or whole, small-scale and larger, outdoor and in, for a couple of years. It's not part storytelling, part physical theatre, part circus or variety; the point is, it moves freely through all these forms as an entity. With puppetry and projection prominent in the first act.
Ingenuity mixes with a seesaw swing between serious and comic. A dramatic exit line's applauded by another actor, then frisked up with the irony of He's a great actor in his own country'. The line returns, spoken complacently by the actor of whom it's been said in the other half. Giles King's Riding Hood walks through the woods, treading on the spot though the spot's a table propelled over the stage, so there is movement. The table's edged with upturned broom-handles a forest, do you see. What's serious, what' comical and do the two separate out?
Fine as King, greatest actor in his own' etc Craig Johnson, and other are, the powerful fable of Red Riding Hood featuring the low comedy of a wood-cutter who tells us he's Swiss though his accent suggests the Netherlands (step forward a thousand dodgy stage-accents) and high drama increasingly shows how extraordinary a performer the company has in Emma Rice.
The sole female on stage, she plays Little Red's loudmouthed slatternly mother, Barbara Hood, and the Wolf. Decked out in fur coat and top-hat, here is wolfishness through and through. The predatory smile, the hat-raising self-congratulatory victory complete with blood-smeared mouth. A remarkable performance in what remains a triumphant company evening.
Mother/Wolf/others: Emma Rice
Father/Red Riding Hood/others: Giles King
Everyone Else: Craig Johnson
Animator/Chorus/Rigger: Pete Hill
Director: Mike Shepherd
Designer: Bill Mitchell
Music: The Baghdaddies
2003-10-10 17:41:27