★★★★

“Although lacking the traditional sleigh bells and Santa, it does have sufficient nostalgia, silliness and giggles to fill a panto-shaped hole”

In case you’re wondering, “Hold on to your butts” is a line from Samuel L Jackson as he is about to reboot the computer systems of Jurassic Park in the 1993 ground-breaking monster flick.

It’s a terrible title for a fun evening but, I suppose, theatre company Recent Cutbacks can’t stick “Jurassic Park” anywhere near the poster for legal reasons.

But the copyright holders need not fear for their intellectual property. It’s in safe hands. This madcap shot-for-shot re-creation of the mega-dinosaur smash is made by people who adore the movie. And love movie-making.

It’s 10 years since this slick whistlestop tribute opened in New York City, later wowing crowds at the Edinburgh Fringe and now setting up at the Arcola under the direction of Kristin McCarthy Parker. Although lacking the traditional sleigh bells and Santa, it does have sufficient nostalgia, silliness and giggles to fill a panto-shaped hole.

This production takes you back. Not just to Steven Spielberg’s genius film, but to your garage, or garden, or park. Where on a rainy Sunday, with nothing else to do and the wifi down, you and your mates stumble upon a cardboard box from Tesco which once held pineapples. The box becomes everything – castle, racing car, majestic pirate ship scything the seven seas…

Here, two performers and a sound artist perform a similar feat of ingenuity and imagination in this lo-fi, charming and very funny evocation of the original.

What’s that you say? A herd of serene brachiosaurus sweeping across the plains of Isla Nublar? Here you go. A mosquito trapped in a piece of amber? A barley sugar will suffice, no?

Performers Jack Baldwin and Laurence Pears tread the fine line between slavish adoration of the original and good-natured fanboy parody. On the sidelines, but equally a star, is foley artist Charlie Ives recreating T-Rex roars, rainstorms, computer beeps, creaking branches and everything else that helps make the fun funnier.

The humour is often of the Airplane! variety – aforementioned (pre-Pulp Fiction) Samuel L Jackson’s growing smoking habit an example – and much of the joy is in the anticipation, figuring out how two men and some props retrieved from a trash can are going to make a car fall through a tree, or create the tension of a raptor hunt. And there’s much humour to be mined in the script too – such as Jeff Goldblum’s wry “chaotician” delivering his memorable brow-knitted cod-philosophies studded with Pinteresque ‘umms’ and pauses. Or that perky and patronising strand of DNA explaining how cloning works.

It helps to know something about the film because the sheer challenge of miniaturisation does lend itself to some confusion, but the iconic scenes are all there as anchors – the ripples on the cup of water, T-Rex going to town on a toilet-bound Donald Gennaro, probing a big pile of dino-poop, sweaty Wayne Knight, girlie Laura Dern…

This is the perfect night for anyone who’s ever seen a stack of cone party hats and thought – three of them, artfully placed – there’s my triceratops!

LADY MONTAGU UNVEILED

King’s Head Theatre

★★★

“The dramatic flatness, occasionally cut through with histrionics, and amplified by dance and music, has a cumulative and hypnotic effect, given time.”

Open the lid of this gem-speckled music box and you find a white-gowned Lady Montagu twirling like a punk ballerina.

This tumbling, cavorting biography, held in place by intriguing actor Thesy Surface is bold, although not always successful. It tries to accomplish two things, bids for them with varying degrees of success, and ultimately creates a third thing, which is perhaps more interesting.

Firstly, as the title suggests, Surface, under the direction of Julia Sopher, wants to tell the story of 18th century proto-feminist and rebel Lady Montagu (1689–1762), an English aristocrat and writer. She was an early advocate for smallpox inoculation and, with her sharp wit and outspoken opinions, she caused a scandal by defying social norms.

Her travels to the Ottoman Empire as the wife of the British ambassador led to a string of letters, which provided a candid and often critical view of both Ottoman and English aristocracy.

Her unconventional lifestyle, outspoken nature, sexual liberation and sharp critiques of gender inequality cemented her reputation as both a trailblazer and a controversial figure. In an age of reason, she was unreasonableness itself.

Secondly, and most disastrously, the production wants us – the “Islington woke brigade” – to view this life through modern eyes. This works well when there is a dramatic purpose – exchanging text messages with Alexander Pope for example. But it is clunkingly awful when hammered into place with blunt rivets.

Asking for the wifi password in a Turkish coffee house, suggesting Mozart might be the new Taylor Swift, declaring Aristocrats Lives Matter and endless other equivalents are all delivered with little nudges and winks. See what I did there? She was an influencer! The polite-only titters from the audience suggests, yes, we get it. Move on please. An exorcism of the funnies would also help clear up the tonal confusion which throws the first quarter. This is not a comedy. Not being funny is the clue.

However, a third alchemic element emerges from this tumult. The mad canter through a life too eventful to be told in 75 minutes does succeed in creating a sort of hypnotic kaleidoscope of shifting and glimmering shards.

The dramatic flatness, occasionally cut through with histrionics, and amplified by dance and music, has a cumulative and hypnotic effect, given time.

If, on the point of death, you review your life, it’s possible this is the preferred format – sequential, yes, but without topography and reference, without anecdote or back story, like a vodka fuelled hallucination or fever dream. Life, told this way, is not a purposeful continuum with neon signs pointing out the important episodes but a series of disorientating and cascading fragments that briefly coalesce to create, if not sense, then the brief consolation of beauty.

Thesy Surface’s reach may exceed her grasp but there’s plenty of artistic invention and belief here. Lady Montagu, with all her wanton hedonism, taste for exotica and dismissal of convention, would have applauded.

HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS

Arcola Theatre

★★★★

“Although lacking the traditional sleigh bells and Santa, it does have sufficient nostalgia, silliness and giggles to fill a panto-shaped hole”

HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS

Arcola Theatre then UK Tour continues

Reviewed on 13th December 2024

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Mark Senior

Previously reviewed at this venue:

HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS

HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS

HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS

LADY MONTAGU UNVEILED

King’s Head Theatre

★★★

“The dramatic flatness, occasionally cut through with histrionics, and amplified by dance and music, has a cumulative and hypnotic effect, given time.”