THE BIG UGLY MONSTER AND THE LITTLE STONE RABBIT. To 30 December.

London,

THE BIG UGLY MONSTER AND THE LITTLE STONE BRABBIT
adapted by Matt Mullum from the book by Chris Wormell.

Pleasance Theatre Carpenters Mews North Road N7 9EF To 30 December 2007.
Wed-Sun 11am & 1.30pm.
Runs 1hr No interval.

TICKETS: 020 7609 1800.
www.Pleasance.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 December.

Neat little show makes its point.
This combines a gently sad story, plentiful comic moments and animal puppets in a colourful production including Suzanne Nixon’s utterly untypecast performance. Rik Mayall’s voiceover narration provides a sense of excitement, helping create the monster’s animal-repelling, flower-withering, sun-defying ugliness as much as Brenda Cullum’s body-encasing Monster costume.

The point, unsurprising from an adult perspective, but apt enough for audiences of 3+, with ever-increasing awareness of others around them, is the old exhortation to consider what people are, rather than surface appearances. Since attractive appearance has never lacked a head-start over inward qualities Matt Cullum’s production of his adaptation from Chris Wormell’s story is ever-relevant. The bulbous, wart-encased Monster has his less severely challenged equivalents in most streets and playgrounds.

His benevolent intentions, like his loneliness, are soon evident in early scenes which show how things react to him. Of all the creatures he sculpts in order to create the sense of a circle of friends, only one, a stone rabbit doesn’t fall apart in the face of his smile.

Increasingly, the Monster finds his own voice, for he has, in his imagination at least, a friend. Finally, and ambitiously, the story culminates in a tactful account of the Monster aging, and his death, leaving the stone rabbit behind. There’s a sentimental sadness here similar to Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant which takes a different angle on a lonely individual marked out as separate from the world.

There’s a steady pace of storytelling, with Mayall’s narration preparing younger audience members for what happens onstage. As age and death approach, the narration becomes aptly suggestive rather than graphic. The deliberate pace and visual focus work well, though they point up the story's limits of character and situation.

There’s tension too between the story and a feeling of obligation to entertain families out for a Christmas theatre spree. Inviting youngsters on stage needs more care and preparation than is shown here, where it has no real purpose. It’s a lot to ask someone so young to come out into the lights and start performing, however minimally, in front of strangers. And it showed.

Narrator: Rik Mayall.
Big Ugly Monster: Suzanne Nixon.
Puppeteer: Thomas Barron.

Director: Matt Cullum.
Sound/Music: ThemSounds.
Costume: Brenda Cullum.

2007-12-25 01:38:24