THE INVISIBLE MONKEY. To 3 January.
London
THE INVISIBLE MONKEY
by David Crook
New End Theatre To 3 January 2004
Mon-Sat various dates 11am, 2.30pm, 6.30pm No performance 21,25 December, 1 January
Runs 1hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7794 0022
www.newendtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 December
Clear and clever rhymes, joined later by comic business, are the strongest aspects here.Poor Zach; you can tell he's a decent lad. Only trouble is, he's locked into a nightmare family - the boy next door fostered by a couple out of Roald Dahl. No wonder he wants a pet. But, HE CAN'T HAVE ONE. So there. That's where the fun begins.
David Crook's verse play isn't pantomime doggerel, but free-flowing and natural-seeming, comic but never degraded in the cause of raising laughs.
In the first of the two brief acts, Zach mimes his way out of a locked room, encounters a pet-pedlar whose extortionate prices leave the lad able to afford -after fund-raising efforts - only a monkey no one can see. Via a Dream (David Charles' personification undercutting trad. dream-images as a discontented worker perpetually moaning about his conditions of service) Zach raises the money just in time for the interval.
This first act's kept going by comic incident and skilful rhyming. And by Patti Love's over-aged punk Aunt, clearly in the Wicked Witch tradition, delighting in her cruelty and hatred of animals. Her performance is comically pointed and physically precise - the facial contortions show a life of self-regard - and, vocally, would be ideal in a theatre 3 times the tiny New End. She isn't about pianissimo, this Aunt Hettie.
By the side of Love's Aunt - cruel, a domestic tyrant to her suffering husband and nephew, and full of disgusting recipes as Christmas villains so often are - Mathew Wade's Zach could do with more definition. It's low-key realistic to a fault; in such comedy merely being not-nasty isn't enough.
Still, things hot up for Hettie when Elisa Laghi's cheeky monkey goes about her business. Laghi's athletic, speechless performance, adorned by Monkey's mischevious smile, creates a series of comic routines, including the silent-movie type scene - where Het's attempt to make a hot drink while the unseen mammal keeps whisking things away has a classic suprise culmination.
It all leads to Hettie's sudden conversion to virtue and decent food - a conclusion providing a happy end if not a well-argued story outcome. Along the way are some songs, pleasant enogh while they're being sung (anyone finding they have more durable appeal will be heartened that CDs are on sale during the interval).
There isn't the story-drive that would make a fully satisfying story, while the second half tends to dissolve narrative in comic routine. But, with Love and Laghi's various dynamism in particular, and the mix of well-formed verse dialogue and farcical business, this is a worthwhile contribution, for all but the youngest children, to London's eclectic Christmas theatre season.
Zachary: Mathew Wade
Aunt Hettie: Patti Love
Uncle Mort/Pedlar/Dream: David Charles
Monkey: Elisa Laghi
Director: Linda Marlowe
Designers/Costume: Simon Holdsworth, Naomi Taylor
Lighting: Mihaly Bekesi for Company Deeperred
Musical Director: Harriet Bush,an
Movement director: Gavin Marshall
2003-12-16 18:03:43