Tag Archives: Daniel Balfour

A Fairytale Revolution

★★★★

Theatre503

A Fairytale Revolution

A Fairytale Revolution: Wendy’s Awfully Big Adventure

Theatre503

Reviewed – 7th December 2019

★★★★

 

“wholesomely joyous and bitingly witty”

 

We all know how a fairy-tale goes: Baddies and goodies each play their part, the goodies prevail and, of course, they all live happily ever after. But how would you feel playing the same part forever and ever? Wendy (Anais Lone) has spent her forever and ever looking after The Lost Boys, cooking, cleaning, and being the nice little lady she was written to be. But she feels certain she could do something different; she wants a true adventure! Meanwhile on the other side of Neverland, Hook (Louise Beresford) has grown tired of the pirate’s life, and secretly pores over his poetry. No more swashbuckling and kidnapping for him, instead he dreams of perfecting the haiku. The two misfits decide to team up and rewrite their parts. But can they change their stories without suffering the wrath of the narrator?

The idea of the narrator as a fearsome tyrant is brilliant, represented by an omniscient overhead voice and a pink glow. The dulcet, soporific tone we all know as fairy-tale storyteller finally faces the modern world, where women can be any number of things, and men needn’t express themselves through violence, and of course that puts rather a spanner in most classic fairy-tales.

As you can imagine, the land of Happily Ever After is filled with tens and tens of your favourite heroes and villains, so with a cast of only four, they have to get rather imaginative. Aside from each performer playing a bunch of characters, there’s some great use of puppetry and props (as designed by Daisy Blower). I particularly enjoyed the two hats on a stick for Helena Morais to present Hansel and Gretel, swapping between the two as she follows a trail of imaginary biscuits across the stage.

The evening is of course jam packed with big musical numbers (written by Hannah Benson) aping some all-time classics. The musical highlight is most definitely the ode to Rocky Horror with “Let’s do the pirate again” (It’s just a slash to the left, an eye patch to the riiiiight) – hard not to join in with that one I must say. There’s a slight problem with pitch across the whole cast, but it doesn’t really matter when they’re all belting their hearts out and clearly having a whale of a time.

Writers Louise Beresford and Anna Spearpoint have created some absolutely brilliant characters – Baker Swife, for example, as played by Spearpoint has been banished for near on 200 years and has consequently engaged in a romantic relationship with her oven, Ken Wood. She has also created a ‘pick-me-up’ pie which basically induces a mind-altering revelatory orgasm in whomever takes a bite.

Normally a panto is written with kids in mind first and grown-ups second, but The Fairytale Revolution (directed by Carla Kingham), both wholesomely joyous and bitingly witty, is genuinely for the whole family. You don’t even need to take a kid as an excuse.

 

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Helen Murray

 


A Fairytale Revolution: Wendy’s Awfully Big Adventure

Theatre503 until 31st December

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
The Art of Gaman | ★★★★ | October 2018
Hypocrisy | ★★★½ | November 2018
Cinderella and the Beanstalk | ★★★★ | December 2018
Cuzco | ★★★ | January 2019
Wolfie | ★★★★★ | March 2019
The Amber Trap | ★★★ | April 2019
J’Ouvert | ★★★★ | June 2019
A Partnership | ★★★ | October 2019
Out Of Sorts | ★★★★ | October 2019
Spiderfly | ★★★★★ | November 2019

 

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Counting Sheep
★★★½

VAULT Festival

Counting Sheep

Counting Sheep

The Vaults

Reviewed – 21st February 2019

★★★½

 

“It is highly effective in its emotional whiplash”

 

There’s nothing like going solo to an immersive theatre production which includes a whole lot of partner dancing, as well as a suggestion for everyone to kiss for about a minute (a suggestion, to my surprise, enthusiastically taken on by most of the audience) to make you wish the ground would literally open up beneath you, or at least make you wish you’d absolutely insisted on a plus-one.

The audience is fair warned from the opening line that their participation is expected. But how is one to know that this will entail not just happily accepting a cup of borscht and clapping along on request, but also marching around the room waving flags and placards, and chanting Ukrainian protest slogans?

We’re led in to this revolution by a very cheery Canadian, played by Michael Edwards, who tells us of his experience of the 2014 Kiev Uprising. This is also where he meets his future partner, played by Georgina Beaty. What begins as a sunny tale of rediscovering his Ukrainian roots, coupled with a bizarre but endearing meet-cute, quickly descends in to a frenzy of fire-blazing barricades, shouts of protest, and banshee wails from a widowed bride as she wraps her corpse groom in her wedding veil.

Beautifully harmonised Ukrainian folk music alternates with Bass-heavy EDM, creating a soundtrack of extreme sentiments. All of the music is arranged by ‘Balaklava Blues’, an outfit consisting only of Mark and Marichka Marczyk, who are also the co-creators and lead characters of ‘Counting Sheep’; this is their story.

Nicolai Hart-Hansen’s design is clever – a banquet table running the length of the room becomes the material for a barricade, as do tyres and sandbags stored under what were the audience’s benches, now dismantled to make room for protest. From the outset the audience is encouraged to use their phones to record and take photos, as do the cast themselves. This found footage is projected live on to surrounding walls, interspersed with scenes from the actual Kiev Uprising.

The production is full of energetic performances, particularly so from Hanna Arkipchuk and Siarhei Kvachonak, whose tragic love story is enacted almost in the background throughout, but whom we become heavily invested in nonetheless.

That being said, there is something uncomfortable about an immersive play in which the audience is pushed to participate in a political moment still ongoing. What Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin, directors and co-writers, have created is a confusion of documentary, play and propaganda. It is highly effective in its emotional whiplash – we’re at a party, now we’re at a protest; we’re at a wedding, now we’re under siege; at one moment the audience dances to a waltz whose lulling rhythm becomes a learning tool for a protestor’s chant – we don’t know what it means but we’re beating the air and shouting along all the same. Somehow it seems irresponsible to merge personal experience, political agenda and participation, and all the more so because it is such an effective production.

 

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

 

Vault Festival 2019

Counting Sheep

Part of VAULT Festival 2019

 

 

 

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