TALES FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM. To 12 January.

TALES FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM
by Gari Jones.

The Mirror Tent BMW Group Plant Oxford Gate 7, Horsepath Road, off Oxford Ring Road, Cowley To 12 January 2008.
Mon-Sun no performance 2-4,9,16-17,24-25 Dec, 1,6 Jan.
various dates12pm, 2.30pm,6.30pm,7.30pm.
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.

TICKETS: 01865 766266.
www.creationtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 December.

Improbable fictions rooted in human realities.
I arrived at Creation Theatre’s Mirror-Tent to discover actor sickness meant there’d be reading of lines by other members of this fine ensemble. The situation chimed in with adapter/director Gari Jones’ invasion of the Grimm brothers’ repertoire (advertised for 5+ “with parental discretion”, however that’s to be exercised before buying tickets), which repeatedly upsets, interrupts, and conflicts with, itself.

Actors argue with technicians, complain about the script, stand on their method-acting dignity or argue behind the audience. Such moments increase, sometimes self-consciously, arguments within the material.

Red Riding-Cape (sic) and Hansel and Gretel’s stories overlap, while the miller’s daughter in Rumpelstiltskin turns the Grimms’ Germany into an outpost of Little Britain. There’s unexpected humour from the mirror expressing fear and frustration as Snow White’s stepmother rages.

Framing familiar and less well-known characters within the story of an anonymous, self-sacrificing girl wandering the forest, suggests the variety made possible by adding character and situation to simple story-patterns. Half her story’s told at the start, leaving her a poor, naked wretch; at the end, when the vicissitudes of fortune and malignity have seen a pack of other characters right, she receives her reward.

Improbable moral fiction (who wouldn’t fall over each other to give all they have if the daily way of the world meant it led to riches?) is transformed into stories of hope. They celebrate generosity, but also shrewdness, trust, resilience and ingenuity, qualities shown by the young as they fend off machinations of the old: step-mothers intruding into the family, or the murderers, rapists and pederasts bound together as witches or wolves.

Creation’s other framing image places a community, suggested by house-like lanterns carried by the cast, within a huge forest. Each safe-seeming home has within it stories arising from human minds tangled and wild as the surrounding forest. Everyone’s normal until it comes to their own story.

So, Gari’s crazy disruptions are innate to the material. His direction is physically inventive, the raised central stage creating opportunities for disappearances or sudden emergings that are integral to the unpredictable world inside, and a shadow’s length away from, us all.

Cast: Claire Andreadis, Alex Beckett, Tim Crowther, Richard Kidd, Eilidh McCormick, Jessica Sedler, Amy Stacy.

Director: Gari Jones.
Designer: Lucy Wilkinson.
Lighting: Chris Smith.
Sound: Matt Eaton.
Movement: Aidan Treays.
Assistant director: Jessica Clare Bridge.
Assistant designer: Madeleine Birchall.

2007-12-02 11:43:33