THE BIG MAGIC. Polka Theatre to 30 March.

Young People

THE BIG MAGIC
by Brendan Murray

Polka Theatre To 30 March 2002
Runs 1hr 35min One interval

TICKETS 020 8543 4888
Review Timothy Ramsden 19 February

Seasonal adjustments threaten to come to an end, in a play which makes its points about human responsibility with a light touch.This new play asks big questions for 5-9s. In different ways, they apply to a child's everyday life and to the future of the world. Brendan Murray uses the idea of the seasons to express all this. He's used them before, in How High Is Up, to deal with bereavement. This play might not have quite the perfect inevitability of the earlier one, but uses well-paced action and lightly-drawn characters to make a piece where, as with all good tailoring, the labels don't show through.

The seasons have stopped rotating and it's going to be night and winter ever more. Bombo, an active, nervous fellow, played by Paul Chan with a perfectly judged childlike intensity of pleasure, fear or discomfort and an expression of incomprehension as to how he's making trouble for himself, reacts like so many children, or indeed adults. When there's trouble ahead he looks to his own interests. To make a stockade and a fire to keep warm he cuts down all the trees, thoughtlessly driving the wildlife away.

And he's not going to share his resources with a passing Tinker, even for a song, dance and magic rainbow in return. Not Bombo, who knows the value of a material resource when he lays his hands on it.

Until he learns survival means regard for the whole ecology – Seema Bowri's costume emphasises the interdependence of species particularly in its three-creature headpiece. Nudged on by Jude Schweppe's wise old Irish Moon, Bombo sets off to search for the big magic which will set the seasons going. Kimie Nakano's designs turn curtains and sheeting into a mountain and sea, the spirits of which are forcefully personified by Clive Llewellyn. To pass these hurdles, Bombo finds he needs the song, dance and rainbow he had rejected when offered by Llewellyn's Tinker.

The physical journey ends suddenly back home; Bombo's journey of self-discovery, aided by Jim Simmon's cold, clear light and Steven Marwick's catchy music, stays with him. Realising you can't save yourself at the expense of others is the big magic which has the world on its axis again. And an audience happily, constructively entertained.

Moon: Jude Schweppe
Bombo: Paul Chan
Dog/Bird/Fish in a Bucket/Animal: Seema Bowri
Tinker/Darkness/Silence: Clive Llewellyn

Director: Roman Stefanski
Designer: Kimie Nakano
Lighting: Jim Simmons
Sound: Matt Hutchinson
Musical Director: Steven Marwick
Movement: Emma Cater

2002-02-20 10:10:09