Rumpelstiltskin: till 26 April

RUMPELSTILTSKIN

Tutti Frutti theatre company on tour to 26 April 2003
Runs 1hr 40min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 April at Lawrence Batley Theatre Huddersfield

Theatrical magic on a shoestring for 6+.
With little more than several platforms and a few musical instruments, Tutti Frutti create a brisk, enchanting retelling of this familiar story. The first half’s pure theatre magic, and though the second can’t, finally, pulls its threads together, it is, overall, a stimulating theatre-piece.

Each act begins chorically, voices gradually assembling the name ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, crucial secret of the subsequent drama. This mysterious air’s soon dispelled – until needed – by comedy and swift visual storytelling. Chand Martinez doubles as the know-all Miller whose careless talk almost costs his daughter’s life and the King whose hunting accident throws him into love at first sight with Miller’s daughter Shonali.

Less successful, but economically necessary is the drag act imposed on Stewart Thomas as Mrs Miller, co-sufferer with Shona (to her friends) of her husband’s talkativeness. Better if Thomas were able to concentrate on his villain role, an apparent mix of palace cleric and financier. No doubting hispriority lies with the gold he forces a captive Shona has to spin from straw – in accordance with her proud father’s foolish boasts – to avoid increasingly painful forms of death.

Both adult foolishness and the fear of isolation and impossible tasks in a world suddenly, unfairly hostile and confined, mirror childhood experience and fears. Niladri’s production handles the emergence of the old man who helps Shona superbly; first one, then eventually three, Rumpels emerge from the floor, and spin straw into gold: the first time, especially, is miraculous as a handful of cereal seems transformed to spun-gold.

And mother’s dream, caught in a forest of streamers of the old man’s name, is more theatrical magic After this, the concluding homily on loneliness and the wicked Chancellor’s humiliation seems at once over-easy and unconvincing as plot resolution.

Dominic Sales’ music is a major production feature, upstaging the mimetic action during the search for all the names under the sun (a neatly multi-ethnic list emerges), with its melody encapsulating the frustrating name-search in its ruins leaps and circularity.

Elsewhere, with mysterious chimes and resonant xylophone, or a perky march, Sales’ score makes an integral contribution to this fine theatre-piece

Shonali/Rumpelstiltskin: Lucy Atkinson
Rumpelstiltskin/Miller/King: Chand Martinez
Musician/Rumpelstiltskin: Dominic Sales
Mrs Miler/Chancellor/Rumpelstiltskin: Stewart Thomas

Director: Niladri
Designer: Jim O’Reilly
Lighting: Spike Mosley
Composer: Dominic Sales

2003-04-16 20:28:33