Etcetera Theatre, London
***
Battling through a snowy
Camden to the Etcetera Theatre, surrounded by the young and trendy making their
way to equally trendy bars, one experiences a London that is a far cry from the
one Guy Jones deals with in his adaptation of the classic fairy tale The Red Shoes. Under MaryClare O’Neill’s
direction, this Straight on Till Morning Theatre production promises a combined
tale of two girls with an illicit attraction to a pair of red shoes, one
residing in the world of Hans Christian Andersen, and the other in the
aftermath of the 2011 London riots. Promises and reality, however, do not
always coincide.
The Hans Christian Andersen
tale is one of rags to riches, where a young girl becomes vain and possession
obsessed, and her attachment to a forbidden pair of red shoes comes with the
ultimate punishment. The shoes become stuck to her feet, and force the girl to
dance without stopping, until the only option is to cut off her feet. The
story’s warnings against materialistic tendencies, and its inclusion of a punishment
that seems much worse than the crime perpetrated, definitely hold resonance
with the witch-hunt that followed the chaos of the riots. The second tale
occurs in parallel to the first. In a brief scene at the beginning, we see a
young London girl being interrogated after climbing through a broken shop
window and taking a pair of red shoes. If she does not divulge information
surrounding the riots, she will face jail; her interrogators leave her to
‘think about it’. Here the story unfolds into the re-telling of the first tale.
Once finished, we return fleetingly to the interview room, where the girl is
interrogated once more and, with no answer, the play ends.
Separately, the two parts
are well written. Jones successfully captures the voice of a young girl in
trouble in both worlds. There is particular wit to the 2011 setting, where the
facetiousness of a London teenager mixes with an innocent fear of
punishment; as for the fairy tale setting, it is written with a
pace that takes the audience dancing through the journey of the young girl
Karen. What the show lacks, however, is a real sense of connectivity between
these two stories. Using the riots to explore the play’s themes is certainly an
admirable notion, but perhaps one that isn’t fully realised. Of course no play
should spoon-feed its audience, but the abrupt ending leaves too many
questions, which could be solved if the production intertwined the two tales
instead of jumping from one section to another.
That said, the other aspects of the production are
solid. O’Neill’s direction transforms Jones’ words using a wealth of movements
and characterisations that give the piece a real energy, an energy matched by
the vibrancy of the acting. All four actors (Ewa Jaworski, Lucas Rush, Eddie
Fallon and Benedikte Faulkner) are commendable, with Jaworski undertaking the
roles of the two girls, and showing some of the parallels between them, with a
combination of feistiness, vanity and vulnerability. Rush, Fallon and Faulkner
adopt the tales’ varied roles with great ease, Rush and Faulkner in particular
demonstrating a fantastic range of facial contortions that add both comedy and
darkness to their different characterisations. Roma Yagnik’s music reinforces
the tone of the play, adding a dark and mystical quality that reminds us
that fairy tales do not always come with a happy ending.
It is a play of great potential. Perhaps an
extended running time would have allowed for more development of the 2011
world, and a greater link between the two tales. But overall, their ambitions
are praiseworthy, and their message most certainly attention-worthy.
This
production was part of the PNPA festival which runs throughout January.
For
more information: http://www.etceteratheatre.com/details.php?show_id=1420
@EtceteraTheatre
@straightontill
No comments:
Post a Comment