It’s a simple enough formula, but with Times Square Angel is doesn’t quite work. Described as a “hard-boiled Christmas fantasy” you can’t help but get the feeling that many of the cast are performing in a different show altogether.
Room On The Broom, based on the picture book of the same name by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler flew into the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue today to cast a magical spell over its young audience. Presented by theatre company Tall Stories, this 55 minute show was an absolute delight, and had the audience aged 3+ hooked from start to finish. Room On The Broom tells the story of a friendly witch (Yvette Clutterbuck), her cat (Emma MacLennan) a dog and a frog (David Garrud) and a bird (Daniel Foxsmith) who take to the skies on a broom and face a fearsome dragon (Daniel Foxsmith) in this magical, musical adventure. Room On The Broom is a colourful and beautifully staged telling of a story that many youngsters present in the audience knew intimately. One youngster sitting next to me knew large slabs of the text and recited along as … Read more
McIntyre directs with careful, thorough assuredness, avoiding the easy trap of treating the material like the melodrama it could so easily become, preferring instead to focus on true and believable characterisation and detailed, intimate, and utterly believable situations and exchanges.
What Hare has created here is a marvel: a tale of hope, horror and truth on an enormous scale, but rooted firmly in the characters and personalities of a particular culture, a particular place. It is, in every way, epic and at its most epic when looking into the minds of the central characters as they contemplate their existence which is a reflection of all of ours.
A beautiful, sometimes shocking, sometimes haunting, production of an intricate and detailed dissection of human frailty and weakness. Doran lavishes great care and attention on the task of illuminating the text, telling the story in an engrossing way. Niki Turner’s spare, but stunningly effective design, aids immeasurably.
In five snapshots, we see Jen, as masterfully portrayed by Jennifer Clement, slowly come of age through this discovery and Uncle Len, perfectly embodied by Graham O’Mara, as he fumbles to reboot his own life, now that his protective big brother has killed himself amid sex abuse charges and his estate dries up.
The production is blessed with good acting, impeccable timing and a sense of style, mischief and swagger which accentuates its high points. Pretty much everyone is trying to best everyone else with an armoury of quips, quibbles and quizzical asides and, happily, Luscombe seeks to make the most of this.
Constant eruptions of anger, sexual frustration, discrimination of town against country and English against Irish, and hostilities of son against father, servant against master and mistress run as a guiding set of threads through every scene; and assorted categories of gendered vanity, both misogynist and misanthropic, provide the root of much of the humour, some of it still unsettlingly cruel and mocking
