QUANGLE WANGLE: till 25 May

Young People

QUANGLE WANGLE
by Virginia Radcliffe

Wee Stories Tour to 25 May 2003
Runs 55min No interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 May at Playhouse, MacRobert Centre Stirling

Colourfully imaginative piece for 3-7 which links fantasy to common childhood experience.
Feeling lonely and making friends are important experiences from an early age; a sense of loss and discovery imbues the Edward Lear poems which are the basis for this new play. There’s the Quangle Wangle, alone in the Crumpetty Tree until Mr and Mrs Canary etc. start landing.

And, via the shared presence of the Dong with a Luminous Nose, the Jumblies’ melancholy refrain – though the stack of green and blue creatures lined-up here is more like an assertive Travelling clan than the remote inhabitants of the ‘far and few’ islands.

The poems – with assorted limericks – are discovered by two youngsters for whom life’s pretty ordinary. Garbed in plain gaberdines, sporting identical specs, both find a small battered suitcase in the street. This talking-point brings them slowly, awkwardly together till the imaginative magic of language – represented by colourful pop-ups, inside the cases, of Crumpetty Tree and Jumbly-bearing sieve, as well as phrases flying aurally around the stage - sends them off on their play-making voyage.

It takes some time to reach the Lear poems, though the opening scene allows young audience members to trust Stella and Stan as friends: an investment for imaginative participation in their story. And there’s plenty of fun when the verse comes, with colourful costume, song and comedy (some planned scenes ended on the rehearsal-room floor to keep the length manageable: no Pobble emerges, with or without toes).

Writer/director Virginia Radcliffe’s enthusiastic Stella is partnered in their joint discoveries and play-creation by Johnny Austin (something of a next-generation John Gordon Sinclair), whose Stan is a nervous follower in their joint discoveries and play-creations, but growing in assertion when he has an ‘and’ or ‘but’ to add or argue.

Once launched into Lear there are several awkward withdrawals into acknowledging the pretence of what they’re doing, jolting the developing imaginative tread. But this applies to just a few moments in a show that blossoms from the grey street to a world of colour and active companionship: new friends making something together.

There’s a well-judged ending, the pair going their own ways home but clearly not forgetting their meeting, and finding their lives too could become an adventure book.

Stan: Johnny Austin
Stella: Virginia Radcliffe

Director: Virginia Radcliffe
Designer/Costume: Catherine Lindow
Lighting: Kevin McCallum
Music: Timothy Brinkhurst
Choreographer: Tamsin Grainger

2003-05-16 10:12:12