Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
Angela Carter's ‘The Magic Toyshop’ is a coming-of-age story that approaches the fantastical metaphors of portal fantasy and magical realism from dark, questioning angles. Melanie (Rosanna Brear) is a fifteen year-old girl in the throes of sexual awakening: when her parents are killed in an aeroplane crash, she and her brother Jonathan (Luke De Belder) are sent to live with their draconian Uncle Philip (Jonathon Carr) and mute, tyrannised Aunt Margaret (Emily Russell) - as well as their unexpectedly Irish cousins, shy Francie (Ryan Lane) and roguish Finn (James Soldan).
As Philip, purveyor of signs, omens and the titular toys (Georgia Bird, Francesca Murray-Fuentes), sets to making his mark on the children, Melanie finds herself inextricably romantically entangled with Finn. The play discusses the real danger of unreality - the too-small differences between magic and volatile insanity, and the tangible comforts to be found in things mundane. Lurid spots are used to frame scenes of unusual emotion and metaphor; warm full-stage lights complement scenes of family normality. A gorgeous set mingles exoticism with paper-brown British fug.
Brear's Melanie is strong. Early on there is a jarring modernity to some of her inflection - the clash of her maturing cynicism with the Famous Five-wholesomeness of her surroundings resultantly comes off as anachronistic. In the stifling madness of the toyshop, though, her semi-sardonic innocence plays more believably against Soldan's wild, infectious humour, and her showing of the character blooms. Brear expresses Melanie's nuance with proficiency: naive vulnerability mingles with cutting intelligence to portray a girl nearing adulthood who is at sea in the otherworldly predations of a childhood menaced. As we progress her fourth wall-breaking narration sheds disruption for desperation: Brear's worried glances at the audience are empathic preludes to moments of honesty which she is no longer truly allowed. Indulgent humour becomes needful divulgence, and Brear's tense delivery sells the narration as crucial to her character and the play both.
Soldan as Finn is a compelling tragi-comic presence. His comic delivery is skilful and used to good dramatic purpose; his irreverent hilarity persisting through brutality and strife makes it all the more effective when we finally see him unarmoured. Finn is a larger-than-life presence who sees himself as smaller than dirt, whose humour is a defence mechanism, and whose morality is conflicted between nihilistic lewdness and an enduring belief in family - Soldan's mercurial blend of recklessness and vulnerability expresses this ably. And Finn and Melanie's thorny attraction owes credit to both actors: despite the stigmas of incest and age difference and Finn's often disturbing predations on Melanie (she struggles as he kisses her; he spies on her undressing), the chemistry between them is entirely creditable. The audience finds themselves divided between rooting for this romance and abhorring it.
Carr as Philip suffers from some one-dimensionality. At best his loud, barking delivery has a palpable menace: in early appearances, though, he veers unfortunately into chewing the scenery, slurring some lines into the bargain. Despite this, he's a menacing villain and his callous madness comes across: there is only the sense of his being an implacable evil more than a developed character. This can't solely be assigned to Carr, of course, and when he does get the rare chance to soften his tones and be sinister rather than volatile he makes the very best of it. His physical acts of violence are, too, truly unsettling. And Bird and Murray-Fuentes, his puppets, use dance and gymnastics in a way that evokes some of the play's most uncanny horror.
This is a classic delivered with every bit of its deserved emotive power. Thoroughly recommended.
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