I have some stern advice: if you are thinking of taking a young person, who has never been to the theatre before, to see the Christmas show at the Tobacco Factory – DON’T! If you do they are likely to come away with the wrong impression: they may think that all theatre is this inventive. Consider the future consequences. Consider how crestfallen they may be to discover on future outings that flights of fancy conjured up by a whip sharp company of actors at the hand of a mistress of theatre (Ms Cookson, ably assisted here by her amanuensis Mr. Pirie) for whom to imagine is to realize, is by no means the norm.
Just stop to consider the future disappointment in finding that not all actresses are as versatile as Lucy Tuck. How could one person play such a teasingly spiteful step-sister one moment and such a solicitous and down-to-earth (yet sinuously elegant) mummy/queen the next? And with a voice – vox humana fully extracted – that rattles the spoons in the bar.
Take a moment to think how you would explain that not all actors were like Dorian Simpson who one moment can be a delicate(ish) bird whilst the next a nasty step-brother who’s secretly rather nice.
Have a care, especially if your charge is a young girl, that they will not be thoroughly disillusioned in later life to find that not all princes – fictional or otherwise – are quite so bashful, so tender-hearted, so interested in ornithology (if at all) and, well, so charming as Joey Hickman’s delightful creation.
Give some thought to the confusion you might engender in an impressionable mind by guffawing at the capering of Mr. Craig Edwards, who was (rightfully in my view) booed on the stage for the enormities of maternal greed and step-maternal cruelty with which he animated his fuliginous and to delicate sensibilities, repugnant, creation. Colubrine in his cruelly calculated seduction of the open-hearted Prince and with such a display of cupidity as to banish all maternal tenderness, this is a creation to match Mr. Eliot’s, Macavity – ‘a monster of depravity’.
Beware of setting a precedent that all downtrodden and vulnerable stepdaughters should actually be as resilient, strong-willed, resourceful and interesting as Isabella Marshall’s effulgent, peart and thoroughly likeable Ella. Would you have young men fall in love with a fiction?
Just think how expectations will be aroused to find that ‘transformation scenes’ can happen, not behind some dusty painted cloth, but before your very eyes and by a flock of very helpful birds. Picture the disappointment to find that not all theatrical productions have such a witty and integrated score as Mr. Bower’s (here brought to life by Messrs Hargreaves and Heane) or that not all costume is so point accurate as Katie Sykes’ joyful blue and pink.
No, think twice before you bring anybody to this production for I warn you – no good will come of it. ★★★★★ Graham Wyles 8th December 2016
