WILDE TALES. To 2 April.

London

WILDE TALES
by Simon Vinnicombe

Southwark Playhouse 62 Southwark Bridge Road SE1 0AT To 2 April 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm
Runs 1hr 45min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7620 3494
www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Magical tour of Wilde's fantasy stories for the (not too) young.Oscar Wilde's so well-known for wit and satire it's easy to forget how much sentiment lurks, especially, in his prose. The 4 stories skilfully dramatised by Simon Vinnicombe have a Victorian religiosity and sentimentality. Yet there are also sharp moments which reveal an original mind among the period trappings.

In The Nightingale and the Rose a nightingale sacrifices herself (pain, mutilation and death seep through the stories) to provide a student in love with a red rose. He believes its arrival is mere luck and when it's coldly rejected by a materially-minded Vice-Chancellor's daughter, flings it away to return to a life of logic. Max Key's production vividly shows Elisabeth Dahl's gently persistent Nightingale, unselfish and asexually loving, holding the moral energy.

The Nightingale's life ends with a pierced heart. Elsewhere there's the voluntary blinding (executed by an unwilling, expressive puppet-swallow) of a speaking statue with another unselfishly loving heart. The opening story, The Selfish Giant, actually introduces the crucified Christ.

So this show, with its darker moments, isn't for the very young. Only the final story, about a big-headed rocket given his come-uppance in a lordly fireworks display, has a more comic note. However adults, and older children not yet hardened into adolescent scepticism, could enjoy the production's inventive ensemble ingenuity, which is rounded by a sleep and enacted in basic pyjama costumes. Gently accompanied a swaying harp-based melody is the characteristic refrain Key's in-the-round staging offers a range of imaginative groupings, creating an intimacy which matches the calm pacing and storytelling style.

It also allows individual characters to emerge swiftly. Like The Selfish Giant sitting alone in the garden he's walled-off from children. Huddled centrally on the suitcases which form the set (they give the tales an aptly transitory sense) he moves from grumpy satisfaction to lonely misery in seconds.

The mood changes for the final rocket story, yet despite the bouncy music and fizzy movement characterising catherine wheels etc there's a moral melancholy, reflected in the quiet end after the rocket's found its consummation in being consumed and the world returns to its opening sleep.

Cast:
Andrew Allen, Robin Armstrong, Gunnar Cauthery, Elisabeth Dahl, Nic Dawkes, Lynne Forbes

Director: Max Key
Designer: Anna Bruder
Lighting/Assistant director: Gwendolen Scolding
Sound: Alex Metcalfe
Puppet Designer: Mandy Dymond
Costume: Alex Noble, Alice Hoult

2005-03-22 10:29:53