Tag Archives: Sherry Coenen

A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE

★★★

Little Angel Studios

A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE

Little Angel Studios

★★★

“The set and puppets stay true to Axel Scheffler’s always beautiful illustrations”

A Squash and a Squeeze is the first book that the rhyming author Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler created together, and here at the Little Angel Studios is a staged musical adaptation of the classic tale.

I asked the little girl next to me if she knew A Squash and a Squeeze and she told me it was all about friends squeezing into a little house together. The story has now been adapted for the stage by Barb Jungr and Samantha Lane, with music and lyrics by Jungr.

The show has stretched out the compact rhyming picture book to an almost too long one hour show for young children.

“Wise old man, won’t you help me, please, My house is a squash and a squeeze”. The wise old man knows, fill it with a flappy, scratchy, noisy crowd of farmyard animals and when you push them all out, you’ll be amazed at how big your house feels!

At the end of each scene, the aforementioned little girl, did ask is that the end? I love young critics.

The set and puppets stay true to Axel Scheffler’s always beautiful illustrations.

A simple and delightful set by Kate Bunce with a Wendy house that opens out into the inside of the old lady’s house, showing how squashed and squeezed they all become as she takes in more and more of her farm animals.

The puppets by Maia Kirkman-Richards are genius for both young and old to enjoy – but almost underused. Taking Scheffler’s wonderful vision a step further on from the original illustrations and bringing them to life on the stage, the puppets are an innovative delight with the hilarious handheld cat created from a fur-ball of a multi-coloured ball of wool, the popping-eyed handheld chicken who does lose feathers, the goat made from a wheelbarrow and the pig built with an apple crate body that gets filled with all the food it guzzles! The pièce de résistance though must be the Friesian cow made from a yoke holding two wooden buckets, one of which has udders hanging from underneath. But why there were only three udders is still a mystery to us all – I did double check that Scheffler hadn’t drawn it thus – no.

Each farmyard animal has its own upbeat song as they are enticed into the little house. And it certainly was a squash and a squeeze with them all inside! Barb Jungr’s music and lyrics are fun young children’s musical theatre, and as a renowned jazz singer and cabaret artist it was great to see her diversity.

The lead puppeteer Mark Esaias does sterling work as the many characters but syncing his goat’s mouth to his singing might need a teeny bit of tightening up. Both the wise man Gilbert Taylor and Ruth Calkin as the old lady, take their turns with the puppets – there are five to handle at once with a full house of farmyard animals!

Calkin finds just the right balance to create a warm, affronted and a despairingly funny old woman, and in her costume, she looked just like the picture book had come to life.

This stage adaptation introduces the wise old man (Taylor) as a silly billy character who makes “easy-peasy solutions”. He is certainly not the expected Scheffler creation with a white beard, hat and long black coat – maybe it was decided that character looked too austerely Germanic.

However, the easy-peasy solution solver arrives squashing and squeezing through the young audience and then proceeds to sing a song using his Walkman cassette player with the cassette tape getting stuck and needing to be rewound with a pen borrowed from the audience. A strange creative decision, and completely unnecessary to the story. Who in the audience, bar me, understood what he was talking about and doing – little girl critic said to her mummy what is that? – And mummy didn’t know either.

I also did not warm to the wise man character hitting a wasp’s nest on the side of the house with a bat and getting badly stung……that’s silly, not wise and not in the book either – even though the children laughed.

I was rather shocked to see missing from the online programme notes, a biography credit for Axel Scheffler because visually (apart from the wise old man), this production is very much thanks to his illustrations. However clever the author Julia Donaldson is (and her biog is there), a picture book needs those wonderous and creative illustrations – and so does this adaptation.

The cast work very hard throughout – and with three shows a day singing and dancing and puppetry and an audience full of excited children they work up a good sweat.

Did you enjoy A Squash and a Squeeze I ask my young critic. Mmmm…yes.



A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE

Little Angel Studios

Reviewed on 7th March 2025

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Suzi Corker

 

 

 

 

Previously reviewed by Debbie:

ONE DAY WHEN WE WERE YOUNG | ★★★ | PARK THEATRE | March 2025
BIRDSONG | ★★ | ALEXANDRA PALACE | February 2025
AN ALPINE SYMPHONY | ★★★★ | ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL | February 2025
PRIDE & PREJUDICE (SORT OF) | ★★★ | THEATRE ROYAL WINDSOR | February 2025
FIGARO: AN ORIGINAL MUSICAL | ★★ | LONDON PALLADIUM | February 2025
SLAVA’S SNOWSHOW | ★★★★ | HAROLD PINTER THEATRE | December 2024
A CHORAL CHRISTMAS | ★★★★ | SINFONIA SMITH SQUARE | December 2024
TUTU | ★★★ | PEACOCK THEATRE | October 2024
JOYCE DIDONATO SINGS BERLIOZ | ★★★★ | ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL | September 2024
ABIGAIL’S PARTY | ★★★★ | THEATRE ROYAL STRATFORD EAST | September 2024

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🎭 A TOP SHOW IN AUGUST 2024 🎭

WHEN IT HAPPENS TO YOU

★★★★★

Park Theatre

WHEN IT HAPPENS TO YOU at Park Theatre

★★★★★

“sensitively scripted and staged”

When novelist Tawni O’Dell’s daughter was raped, her first instinct was not to write about it. Only through a one-off session with a psychiatrist was the seed planted that perhaps, after a career of writing fiction, writing something based on her own experience might help to process the event. The result is When It Happens to You, a play that details a family’s experience dealing with trauma, not as a family drama, but more as an extended monologue. Each perspective is told first hand, with only rare moments played out in representative scenes for the audience, the transition between introspection and dramatisation indicated by subtle lighting cues against a simple representation of the New York City skyline (Sherry Coenen).

The play uses the rape – as the title suggests – as something that happened. Amanda Abbington plays Tara, representing Tawni O’Dell who played herself in the original Off-Broadway staging. Abbington talks about it as an event that happened in the past, matter of factly, in the past tense. This is exemplified early on with a repeated refrain to set the scene: “the night my daughter was raped…”. The drama of the piece unfolds in the aftermath, showing how, in the words of Tara, the event metastasizes to become the most significant event in her daughter Esme’s life, despite her protestations. As a result, the event permanently alters the mind and relationships of Esme, her mother and brother, Connor.

Despite the grim subject matter the piece doesn’t feel too heavy or overplayed. If anything, moments of cognitive dissonance between how Tara thinks and how she acts create humour, easing the audience in with the juxtaposition of a horrifying 3am phone call and the mundanity of looking for a missing cat. Later, in her one visit to a ‘shrink’ he incisively points out that she uses humour to hide her pain.

Performances are strong all round. Whilst the piece is primarily told to the audience from Tara’s perspective, Director Jez Bond keeps the cast on stage throughout, reacting in character to Tara, with each of her children having a moment to address the audience directly.

When people talk about Esme (Rosie Day), they express worry, frustration and pain. But when Day addresses the audience, she expresses hope found in the colour yellow. Miles Molan as ‘the little prince’ and scientific genius Connor doesn’t skirt around the issue in his monologue, with a frankly rational yet incisive observation that it’s not just the wound of the attack that plagues Esme, but the additional fear of becoming a social pariah when people find out what happened to her. Tok Stephen’s impact belies his rather limited stage time, playing all other male roles with finesse, adeptly switching between a hardened New York detective, a Tony-winning love interest of Tara, and a $300-per-hour psychiatrist.

Slight inconsistencies in plot and performance can be excused given the powerful nature of the piece with its intimate portrayal of a family in crisis. Whilst the narrative is strong for its specificity, it equally finds strength in being a statistically widespread experience. 1 in 4 women have experienced rape or sexual assault. A staggering statistic, confirmed by Rape Crisis England & Wales, that makes this sensitively scripted and staged piece one to watch.

 


WHEN IT HAPPENS TO YOU at Park Theatre

Reviewed on 6th August 2024

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Mark Douet

 

 

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE MARILYN CONSPIRACY | ★★★★ | June 2024
IVO GRAHAM: CAROUSEL | ★★★★ | June 2024
A SINGLE MAN | ★★★★ | May 2024
SUN BEAR | ★★★ | April 2024
HIDE AND SEEK | ★★★★ | March 2024
COWBOYS AND LESBIANS | ★★★★ | February 2024
HIR | ★★★★ | February 2024
LEAVES OF GLASS | ★★★★ | January 2024
KIM’S CONVENIENCE | ★★★★ | January 2024
21 ROUND FOR CHRISTMAS | ★★★★ | December 2023
THE TIME MACHINE – A COMEDY | ★★★★ | December 2023
IKARIA | ★★★★ | November 2023

WHEN IT HAPPENS

WHEN IT HAPPENS

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