PERRAULT'S CINDERELLA & OTHER TALES. TO 12 JANUARY.

Barnet

PERRAULT'S CINDERELLA AND OTHER TALES
by Sian Jones

Kazzum Theatre Company and The Bull at The Bull Arts Centre To 12 January 2003
27 December 2-3, 8-10 January 11am & 3pm
26,31 December 3pm
28-29 December 4-5,11-12 January 3pm & 6.30pm
Runs 2hr One interval

TICKETS 020 8449 0048
Review Timothy Ramsden

Traditional stories retold and fascinatingly interwoven.So far this season, I've come across a Cinderella with one ugly step-sister, and another with two who're quite pleasant. Sian Jones provides a further variation: one outright nasty, the other downright friendly. But that's only one original feature of Kazzum's generally successful revisiting of stories from Charles Perrault, French godfather of the folk-tale who, 300 years ago, first collected the stories which have become a Christmas-time sourcebook.

Along with Cinders, who provides the frame to the piece, we meet Sleeping Beauty, Red Riding-Hood and Puss in Boots. They're part of Perrault's travelling folk-tales company, to which Cinders becomes attached. She's first seen alone, smudge-faced and nervous, a refugee dragging her past in a heavy suitcase, entering a dark, depleted forest, a grey, wasted land.

As Perrault's troupe bound on and Cinders (Liza Zapol, ever-sympathetic as a young person who's been bullied into a state of distrust and fear) joins them, various stories unfold and overlap as relationships between the tale-tellers and the newcomer reflect their story characters. Though Sleeping Beauty's story gives flight to fairy-puppets, part of Kazzum's visual theatre stock-in-trade, it's the least integrated part of the play, reaching a perfunctory end with no true resolution.

It's then Cinderella offers her story, eagerly written down by Perrault for his collection. It too seems unresolved – her history ends with the step-family victoriously off to the Ball as she shuffles defeated from home, unhappily trailing her luggage.

Midpoint Jones runs the risk of losing story-telling momentum; there seemed notably more inattention during a brief section about Perrault's (unhistorical) troupe itself. But, post-interval, narrative and attention are restored with a racy recounting of Puss in Boots, audience participation included. David Garrud's a likeable Puss and does a decent drag-act as Cinders' more benevolent step-sister.

And when Riding-Hood insists on playing the Wolf in her own story, showing herself a true Wolf in someone else's clothing, her step-sister cruelty finds its ultimate, violent expression.

But the best coup's saved to last, as the final loose threads triumphantly zing together and Cinderella, apparently dispossessed again, finds her happy end.

Charles Perrault: Thierry-James Lawson
Cinderella: Liza Zapol
Little Red Riding Hood: Lucy Christy
Sleeping Beauty: Caroline Partridge
Puss in Boots: David Garrud

Director: Peter Glanville
Designer: Madelon Schwirtz
Lighting: Martin Hutchings
Video: Thierry-James Lawson
Puppet Maker: Andy Jones

2002-12-25 16:39:59