THE HAPPY PRINCE. To 6 January.

Leicester

THE HAPPY PRINCE
by Oscar Wilde adapted by Annie Wood

Haymarket Studio To 6 January 2007
Mon-Sat various days 10am, 1pm, 2.45pm
Runs 55min No interval

Tickets: 0870 330 3131
www.lhtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 December

A happy, gentle show.
Oscar Wilde’s moral fairy-story is as weepily optimistic as any late Victorian could wish. Annie Wood’s stage version is judiciously suited to people of 3+ in this modern age, setting Wilde’s tale within the frame of 2 young storytellers, female and male, from the modern age (though not aggressively so) whose initial rivalry over which story to tell changes as they discover the benefits of co-operation.

Set in an enclosed garden, the gate guarded by a talking lion-statue, the space suggests both safety and adventure. Imagination too, as the storytellers discover clues to the story they should be telling, and objects they can use. The ornately-planned garden contains litter and a rubbish bin, making it a place as suited to Wilde’s elements of poverty and suffering as it is to the bejewelled Prince whose living statue towers above his townsfolks’ tougher reality.

The Narrators take on the central roles of the Prince and the Swallow which helps him carry out his acts of kindness towards the poor, thereby mending their lives. Both suffer by their sacrificial actions, the Prince in losing his eyes, the bird by missing her migration to warmer climes. It’s by first establishing the actors as storytellers, and by emphasising the positive act of creating the inner story, that Wood evades the original’s sentimental cruelty.

Kully Thiarai’s Leicester revival of what seems to be emerging as a piece of modern classic theatre for this age-group aptly captures the contrast between the Prince’s certainty in donating his jewels to help the city’s poor, and the Swallow’s anxiety as she’s torn between putting his wishes into effect and missing her flight. Only the Lion King comic moments involving the statue seem imposed artificially on Wilde’s story and Wood’s dramatic frame.

Both performances here handle the action reliably, with the right note of restrained emotion, properly focusing on action rather than feeling (these are storytellers, not Wilde’s characters themselves). One of them, though, should not try to sing, giving the tone-deaf lion-statue competition for missing the notes.

But that’s only a few moments out of a happy theatrical experience.

Angel/Happy Prince: Harry Kent
Angel/Swallow: Kerry Claire Phelan

Director: Kully Thiarai
Designer: Karen Tennant
Music: David Trouton

2007-01-02 03:08:11