RUMPLESTILTSKIN & OTHER GRIZZLY TALES. To 23 December.
London
RUMPLESTILTSKIN AND OTHER GRIZZLY TALES
adapted by Alistair Green and Joanna Volinska
New Wimbledon Studio The Broadway Wimbledon SW19 1QG To 23 December 2004
Mon-Wed;Fri-Say 7.30pm Thu 6pm Mat Thu 1pm Sat 3pm
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
TICKETS: 0870 060 6646 (Booking fee)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 December
Sassy, sinister and subversive unmerry winter tales from Horla.This extraordinary show isn't for the very young. Its highly physical style can be allusive and elusive. The climax of the most realistic tale here, W.W. Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw' certainly suggests something inhuman as the dead daughter wished back to life approaches with scratching and multiple knockings. But the nature of the horror is never expressed, there's merely a horrified look as the door is opened.
Jacobs' realism (important, as it offsets the single supernatural element) tests the method of Alistair Green's production for Horla theatre company. Concentrating on the performers and what they can achieve with voice, physicality and live music leads to inventiveness with far-ranging folk and fairy tales. With a more realistic narrative it risks ending up as sketchy staging.
Despite that, the scene comes off well enough, as do most in this concoction of enactment, narrative, enactment with narrative, and mime with musical underscoring. The whole production breathes ahead-of-the-game skill. Yet this can provide an ultimately self-limiting sophistication. The Elves and the Shoemaker is near killed-off by its nudging-knowingness and sexual innuendo.
In the opening, title story where inconvenient details are skated over or ignored the king who sets the Miller's daughter spinning gold is so superciliously unpleasant as to rob the resolution of its richer value. At such times lightness of touch becomes lack of substance.
Yet elsewhere there's a sassy assertiveness, as in the welding of the Wolf from Three Little Pigs with a tough-girl Red Riding Hood well-used to dealing with wolves and none too bothered about porcine lives either.
Generally the first part is a pattern of brief stories, the second brings more sustained narratives. Perhaps the finest is the Russian tale of Vassilisa the Brave, its young heroine kitted out with the standard-issue step-mother and finding the courage to visit Steppe-witch Baba Yaga. Green's invention is at its height here, swift-pacing and clear-outlined characters at their most powerful.
Horla field the kind of cast that makes British theatre seem endlessly resourceful. Throughout, individual personalities are never lost in the remarkable ensemble strength, making for a grizzly, inventive show.
Cast: Rosie Armstrong, Philip Buck, Carole Carpenter, Chris Courtenay, Derek Elwood, Kathryn O'Reilly, Sarah Ratheram, Dave Roberts
Director: Alistair Green
Designer: Tracy Waller
Lighting: Ben Pickersgill
Music: Vanessa Lucas-Smith, Jon Langford
Assistant director: Jacob Stoebel
Associate director: Joanna Volinska
Assistant designer: Caroline Story
2004-12-15 01:42:56