RUMPELSTILTSKIN Tall Stories to 6 January.
Aberdeen
RUMPELSTILTSKIN
Tall Stories Lemon Tree 2-6 January 2002
Runs 55 mins No interval
TICKETS 01224 642230
Review Timothy Ramsden 22 December
Simple and imaginative, this is high quality theatrical storytelling.They recommend it for ages 6-106. I hope no-one's grown so gnarled in mind they cannot enjoy this piece, while the only reason the very young might find it difficult is because of the need to interpret the stage images. Their meaning is implied but not directly stated in the (uncredited) text.
Staging is minimal, skeletal even. Costume is nowadays-realistic. Fire and life come through inventive use of the few props and, most of all, through detailed, physically inventive acting. Much theatre claims to be about story; Olivia Jacobs' production justifies this claim (by no means all such claimants do).
Behind the events lies a double-value system. A boastful Miller claims his daughter can spin straw into gold. A materially-minded King offers her his hand if she can, and threatens to take her head if she cannot. Summoned to the royal presence, the girl has no idea of this claim until she's locked up with a spinning-wheel and straw.
So much for ambition, greed and empty promises. Yet beyond materialistic aims lies a deeper purpose in life, only fully apparent in the closing moments. For Rumpelstiltskin, the strange old creature who spins the gold, takes all the girl possesses then finally makes the demand which most clashes with humanity – his price, unless the girl can guess his name, is her first child.
Unsurprisingly, the three nightly stints the King sets her to, invaded as they are by Rumpelstiltskin's necessary yet forbidding presence, take over the girl's life. By night three she's even speaking as if at the old man's dictation. Yet she realises she did wrong in offering her child-to-be's life, 'I shouldn't have promised wasn't mine.'
So she comes to a fuller understanding of humane values. How much so is only made clear as the play ends and it becomes apparent the mother telling the whole story is the girl-become-Queen herself, and the child listening intently is the very one who might have been given away had an over-confident Rumpelstiltskin not inadvertently revealed his name. This production's achievement is to explore so much with lightness and wit.
Queen: Nicola Harrison
King: Steve Brownlie
Rumpelstiltskin: Adam Bampton-Smith
Director: Olivia Jacobs
Designer: Katie Avis
Lighting: James Whiteside
Music: Jon Fiber
2002-01-01 01:08:56