PINOCCHIO. To 3 February.
Tour.
PINOCCHIO
by Mike Kenny.
Northumberland Theatre Company tour to 3 February 2008.
Runs 1hr 25min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 January at Alfric Village Hall.
Small yet perfectly-formed.
Mike Kenny makes light of Pinocchio’s story. Which is just as well, for Carlo Collodi’s original tales are heftily laden with late-Victorian (or post-Risorgimento) morality. Kenny signals his zany style with character names nicked from the Marx brothers, while Gillian Hambleton’s production sets out its stall with circus-like razzmatazz, if not actual big-top type thrills ands spills.
Pinocchio wants to be a real boy, not a pine-eyed wooden puppet. With frantic Marxism the actors introduce a bespectacled log as star of the show. Only intransigence on its part leads, in desperation, to enthusiastic, put-upon Zippo being allowed the role.
Kenny cannily reduces a lot of Collodi’s stories to a rapid-fire recapitulation by Pinocchio on re-meeting the toymaker Gepetto, who first formed him into a puppet. Familiar elements such as the admonitory Cricket and the lie-detector nose extensions are given brief appearances.
But lightness of manner doesn’t mean a feather-headed evening. Kenny’s well-aware of Pinocchio’s faults and while he doesn’t come down as heavily as some adapters on the Playland episode, he shows Pinocchio repeatedly tempted to avoid school. Lampwick, who seduces him to the place where eternal sweets and games literally makes donkeys of people (wooden or otherwise), has all the insignia of lumpen, baseball-cap, gum-chewing, “innit”-spouting surliness.
Meanwhile, Fox and Cat offer more insidious adult menaces, sliding insinuatingly, voices plausibly smooth as they almost give themselves away repeatedly, thereby emphasising Pinocchio’s vulnerable naivety. And the swift-storytelling with its immediate humour finds poetic contrast in the glass-paperweight symbolic representation of the virtuous Blue Fairy.
Atmospheric lighting helps create the underwater scene, while fast-movement around the hall maintains circus-like momentum. Reliable performances, especially from Louis Roberts as the ever-willing but unheeded Zippo, then as a Pinocchio easily led astray in wide-eyed innocence and Philip Oakland, with his fussy, bespectacled Gepetto and, in utter contrast, a Fox relaxed in stance yet ever-watchful.
He’s partnered by Janine Leigh (also the comic highpoint with a Lampwick repeatedly identified as a chav in the audience comments book) as his sidekick Cat. They’re an amusing duo on stage but sinister as threatening presences in Pinocchio’s world.
Harpo/Gepetto/Fox/Harlequin: Philip Oakland.
Chico/Mr Cherry/Cat/Pulcinello/Lampwick: Janine Leigh.
Zippo/Pinocchio: Louis Roberts.
Groucho/Crickets/Showman/Ring Master/Blue Fairy: Stephanie Butler.
Director: Gillian Hambleton.
Designer: Michelle Hudson.
Composer/Musical Director: Jim Kitson.
2008-01-23 16:12:04