JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH. To 20 January.
Bolton
JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH
by Roald Dahl adapted by David Wood
Octagon Theatre To 20 January 2007
11-15; 18-22 Dec; 9-12; 15-19 Jan 10.15am
Mon-Thu; Sat 2.15pm
Fri, Sat & 26-28 Dec; 2-4; 8 Jan 7.15pm
no performance 25 Dec, 1 Jan
Audio-described 12 Jan 7.15pm
BSL Signed 8 Jan 7.15pm
Runs 1hr 40min One interval
TICKETS: 01204 520661
www.octagonbolton.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 2 December
Clear and colourfully-told adventure well-geared to young audiences.
There’s not much story to this Roald Dahl tale as it reaches the stage in David Wood’s adaptation. But there’s plenty of incident, and in Dahl’s way, both crudely- and highly-coloured, plenty for young people to enjoy. It’s all fantasy, but it resonates with young imaginations. There are the caricature aunts who bring orphaned James up, thinking themselves so worthy, but little short of tyrants to the boy. They’d be terrifying ogres except they’re seen as a flashback from which James has escaped.
Then, the idea of rescuing a bobbing mid-ocean giant peach from sharks’ attentions by noosing multiple seagulls so they lift it to the sky is nonsensical, but has a childlike logic; only facts get in the way of it’s being possible. So, away with facts, which are of little use in a story about a boy and various insects, and similar-sized creatures, sharing a home in a giant peach (which appears, with dreamy logic, from nowhere) in New York’s Central Park.
Having created James’ childhood Hell, Wood shows the fruit’s transatlantic voyage as an escape, the aunts (colourfully created by Emma Manton and Elizabeth Marsh in theirs self-indulgently rotund and mean-stick contrast) being replaced by the co-operative if mildly grumbling creatures one might find in any peach that’s sufficiently gigantic.
From the peach-stone home, all that’s finally left, which opens up in New York, through the various interior and exterior settings of the fully-fleshed fruit in earlier times, Jon Bausor’s designs inventively create a sense of variety. And Sarah Esdaile’s production clearly navigates the action’s demands with amiable performances all round, Alan Morrissey’s tall, gangling James innocently contrasting the more adult grumblings of his multiple-legged companions. He, as any child knows should happen, provides clear solutions when all the adult worrying fails to help.
As a bright, cheerful telling of a popular story, it would be hard to beat either Wood’s adaptation or this Octagon revival. There may not be the overt audience participation of pantomime, but such total audience involvement in story and characters as this show achieves beats that into a pulp any day.
Centipede: Anthony Hunt
Ladybird: Emma Manton
Miss Spider: Elizabeth Marsh
James: Alan Morrissey
Old Green Grasshopper: Thomas Padden
Earthworm: Matthew Woodyatt
Director: Sarah Esdaile
Designer: Jon Bausor
Lighting: Aideen Malone
Sound: Andy Smith
Composer: Simon Slater
Movement: Mickael Gaurier
Puppets/Animation: Mervyn Miller
2006-12-09 12:36:41