THE BOOK OF BEASTS To 1 June.
Scotland.
THE BOOK OF BEASTS
adapted from E Nesbit
Catherine Wheels Theatre Company Tour to 1 June 2009.
Runs 50min No interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden at Unicorn Theatre London.
Beasts tamed in well-paced adaptation.
Adapting The Book of Beasts by E Nesbit (of Railway Children fame), Scotland’s Catherine Wheels take 5+ audiences from the early 21st century to a nursery at the end of the 19th, economically evoked by designer Karen Tennent. Though the outer worlds are very different, the play of childhood imagination follows a very similar path. With quick, explanation-free rationality, young Lionel’s transported from building his toy palace, via a visit from the Prime Minister, into a real one as the new king.
Such unlikelihood’s over before it can be questioned. But in addition, how many children in such a background haven’t had a time they’ve been convinced they’re really something along the lines of a prince or princess?
Lionel’s soon doing the kind of thing he imagines a king might do, which doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination include not following an instruction or two from Nurse. It does mean exploring domestic things he normally wouldn’t touch. Told not to read books written for adult minds, he can’t ignore the large-format title volume. Each beast it depicts flies into Lionel’s imaginary new world as he opens its page, which is OK until he reaches the Dragon.
Catherine Wheels’ devised play recreates Nesbit’s story with the aid of materials transformed as they might be in a child’s play: curtains become the horselike hippogryph’s wings, a red sash the flying dragon. A wardrobe doubles as a carriage and a door.
It’s all neatly done, but perhaps rather predictable for young people’s work these days. There’s nothing truly fearsome about any manifestation of the dragon supposedly terrorising the land, eating up its human and animal subjects in the form of Lionel’s toys.
The acting’s variable too. Ian Cameron’s over-fussy and under-characterised in his human role, though he comes into his own as other creatures. Scott Turnbull has an aptly childlike immediacy and enthusiasm as young Lionel who is starting to learn that actions have consequences in the wider world. And Catherine Wheels’ Artistic Director Gill Robertson is a briskly convincing Nurse, expressing the mood of each situation in Jo Timmins’ fast-moving production.
Chancellor: Ian Cameron.
Nurse: Gill Robertson.
Lionel: Scott Turnbull.
Director: Jo Timmins.
Designer: Karen Tennent.
Lighting: Lizzie Powell.
Composer: David Trouton.
2009-04-11 09:37:35