THE HEART OF ROBIN HOOD: CIRQUE DE SHERWOOD

Sometimes it's good to go into something with very few expectations. Such is the case with The Heart of Robin Hood, currently running at the Royal Alexandria Theatre

Now, I am of course familiar with the Hood, from movies, TV, comics, anime etc but I can't recall every seen him strut around the stage. The Hood's previous appearences in media have covered a broad spectrum of presentation, to action to historical drama to comedy. This presentation clearly falls into the last category

The Heart of Robin Hood is hilarious. There are many laugh out loud moments in the production and a lot of the humour edges into Monty Python territory; a few time if I closed my eyes I swear Michael Palin was on stage. What makes it Monty Python is that the humour is mixed in with some rather realistic representations of life in the middle ages; there is torture, murder, death and a bounty put on the head of children. Yet, it all remains really funny

Really

There have been Robin Hood musicals before but this is not a musical .. well it is ... but it's not. There are one of two occasions where the characters sing but most of the music is provided by the fine roots band Parsonfield. They are an active part of the production, appearing on stage. At one point, when a villain is just bent on hanging someone it is suggested "take the band" Very Monty Python

Parsonfield and their music serves as a kind of Greek chorus but the play employs another classical theatre device, the narrator. Christian Lloyed plays Pierre, Lady Marion's music instructor. In more classic theatre devicery (yeh I just typed that, live with it) Pierre (as well as Marion) have to go in disguise and pretend they are other people which leads to much jocularity

Lloyd is very very good as is everyone in the cast. Paul Essienbee is a standout as Guy Gisborne, being incredibly malicious and hilarious at the same time. Izzie Steele plays Marian and infuses the character with strength and is more than up to the physical requirements of playing the classic "woman disguised as male" role

Another important character in this production is the stage, and the staging. The Hear of Robin Hood is presented on a stage with a huge ramp that starts up at the lights and slopes down to the floor. The actors run up and down this ramp, representing moving from one location to another. Openings can appear in the ramp and sections slide out of it, allowing characters to walk out over the stage below. This is particularly effective when representing characters residing in castles or looking down at the populace

The set also included a huge "oak tree" hanging from the ceiling, extending well out into the audience and another tree on stage proper where Robin hangs out and has his morning latte. There is also a "pond" on stage that characters fall in and out of, it has real water in it. There is another opening in the stage, a hole that opens up and which characters are generally tossed in to at their demise. The chant of "into the hole, into the hole" became a common refrain

This is an incredibly physical production. Cirque de Soleil is living in Sherwood Forest. There is ribbon work, there is a hoop and there is an genuinely hilarious scene where a "dead" character is manipulated like a flesh and blood marionette .. and oddly, it isn't Marion ...

I'll give you a minute

There is a lot of stuff happening in this play or, as they say, a lot of "business" Sometimes that makes for an uneven production but it all works here. Mostly it works because the play does not at all take itself seriously. It's a lark and it makes for a great way to pass a couple of hours

So the next time you're in the woods, keep an eye open for gender bending Ladies, archers in the trees and acrobats with serious knife skills

THE RAILWAY CHILDREN: THEATRE REVIEW

This weekend Collette and I attended the first play in our season of Mirvish Production shows. The play is The Railway Children. Apparantly based on a famous novel that has had TV and movie versions, none of which I have seen so I went into it "blind" one could say.
I knew a couple of things about this production. They built a 1,000 seat theatre especially for this play. The Roundhouse Theatre is just south of the Rogers Centre, by the Steamwhistle Brewery in what was, appropriately, a former train yard. And I knew that it featured a full size steam train nick named Vicky.

The staging was very impressive. The audience is seated on each side of a pair of train platforms that the run the length of the theatre. In the middle of the two platforms are the "tracks" represented by a deep gutter. Not only does the train run in this alley but so do pieces of stage, representing various locations in the show; a living room, a kitchen, the railway office etc. At one end of the tracks is a set of stairs leading to a kid of bridge, actors pass over this bridge as well as on the platforms, the moving stages and in the gutter itself.

Watching the cast run up and down the long platforms and up over this bridge, jumping from moving stage to the platform I concluded that the actors must be in some terrific shape to achieve all this.

The big steam locomotive only makes a couple of appearances. Other times the trains are represented by sound effects and flashing lights. At one point the main characters enter a railway tunnel; as they drop down on to the tracks, a pair of sheer black curtains are pulled the length of the stage, giving us a sense of darkness and constriction.

The staging was very imaginative but unfortunately it may have been the best thing about the show. The acting was solid enough, especially from the three actors who portray the titular children recounting a story from their youth.

What disapointed me was the story itself. It is based in Edwardian England and tells the story of three children and their mother who's middle class London life is torn asunder as their father is sent to prison, unjustly accused of espionage. The family moves to the rural Three Chimneys to begin a new life in poverty, where the trains present the kids with their escape from a drab reality.
Again, I no nothing about the source material. There seems to be something there. There is the father's situation, which is never fully explored in the play. There is the character of a Russian, fleeing the czar for his radical writing and again, never fully explored. There is the mother, a woman in this era who supports the family by her writing .. again, never fully explored.

There is poverty and a train collision and politics but every time the story seems ready to delved into some sort of dramatic depth, we are pulled away from it. There is no conflict in this story and very little tension. We are given a very bland and generic story of three children and their very luke warm adventures. It seems to me that this story has been very gentrified, made a family friendly as possible, and in so doing is about exciting as white bread soaked in milk.

The problem is, I don't know how much this will appeal to children. Yes there are kids in it and there is the train but I think a lot of kids will find this boring. I know I did .. we'll leave my child like or childish status out of this

The Roundhouse theatre is lovely, very intimate, though the acoustics were not great. For such a small space I had to struggle sometimes to hear the dialogue. The staging was imaginative but the star of the show shouldn't really be a giant train.

But it was.