RUMPELSTILTSKIN. To 11 January.

London

RUMPELSTILTSKIN
by Mike Kenny

Unicorn Theatre Company at the Cochrane Theatre To 11 January 2004
Tue-Sun 10.15am, 1.30pm 7,8 January; 2pm 2-4,10-11 January; 5.30pm 2-3,9-10 January
Runs 2hr 10min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7269 1606
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 December

Dark story told with modern urban pace.Light and easy it isn't. Tim Meacock's high-platform set for Emily Gray's aggressively-toned production determinedly sets the tone for a story that has virtually no good character. It has a victim, all right, a young woman bought and sold and commits her child before it's born. Unicorn rightly puts a lower age of 6 on their Christmas production.

For one thing, you have to know about Cinderella. She's not named, but it's clear that's who the queen here is, grown older and living not so happily ever after. Her story of dark into light runs into a new pool of negativity, more dreadful because as writer Mike Kenny says in his brief but illuminating programme note it's unnameable.

Being plunged into kitchen-maid humiliation can't be worse than learning your own father thoughtlessly unnecessarily pushed you into a situation where having your child's life committed, before it's birth, to a strange and sinister old man is the only way to keep your head above your neck.

Actually, Dale Superville's Rumpelstiltskin is younger and more lithe than might be the case, if still an unwelcome presence in his fittingly slithery performance. Emily Gray's final production as a Unicorn associate director (she's just taken up a reign at Glasgow-based TAG) makes such sinister business of the ever-present fair folk' spirits who help and hinder at their will that the constant busy-ness pushes the key moment of Rumpelstiltskin's name being discovered physically to the side, just as the dancing at which it's revealed loses some impact owing to the constant activity.

The gold-spinning is neatly handled, though, and the two-level set impressively imprisons Eleanor Moriarty's victimised Miller's Daughter down below while power-trading goes thoughtlessly on above. And the production catches the moment when Andi Oshi's finely-played servant Mess realises her true nature is to be one of the fair folk, as she divests herself of social clothing and makes off to her true affinities in the spirit world.

It's part of the richness of Kenny's script, much of which finds expression in a production that bravely faces up to the seriousness of folk-tales through the theatre language of a modern urban world.

Queen Mother: Sam Adams
Lord Chancellor: Simon Grover
Prince: Hywel Morgan
Miller's Daughter: Eleanor Moriarty
Mess: Andi Osho
Miller: Garry Robson
Rumpelstiltskin: Dale Superville

Director: Emily Gray
Designer: Tim Meacock
Lighting: Ben Pacey
Composer/Choreographer: Matthew Bugg
Assistant director: Anna Silman

2004-01-01 09:58:39