Review: A Christmas Fairytale
December 14, 2008
Date reviewed: 13 December 2008
Venue: Hull Truck Theatre
Hull Truck’s last Christmas in the old Spring Street Theatre is typically busy. Rob Hudson returns to take the lead in the revival of Gordon Steel’s A Kick in the Baubles (reviewed on the national What’s on Stage site in 2005) whilst Nick Lane’s latest children’s play, A Christmas Fairytale, averages two morning/afternoon performances daily.
Not surprisingly, with sometimes little more than an hour between the two plays, A Christmas Fairytale takes place on the domestic living room set of A Kick in the Baubles, with the crucial addition of the magic television set. Danny, in person, and Fairy Goosemanure, on the screen, tell the story of the time, years ago, when he was only 10 and they swapped roles at Christmas time.
The play is engagingly direct in speaking to the very young audience. Danny is at first more storyteller than fictional character, waving to the audience in greeting and liberally lacing his narration with rude words: Fairy Goosemanure becomes “Fairy Birdpoo” and poo emerges as what grown-up playwrights would call a recurrent theme. As for the fairy herself, she radiates twinkling charm and knowing innocence.
The story line is, in fact, surprisingly complicated, if simply told. Because Danny has opened up a corridor to Fairyland via a fairy light on the tree, he and Goosemanure become each other but, as they each take on the other’s form, the actors change parts. After all the difficulties of the fairy trying to act like a schoolboy and vice versa, we have the problem of unsavoury figures from Fairyland entering the world of “beans” (human beings), the Fairy King’s plans for world domination and the strange tale of Danny’s father. The second half moves towards pantomime, the audience participates happily, there’s time for some gently optimistic little songs, an Elvis Presley impersonation and a rap duet (composer Tristan Parkes) – and the ending, though silly, is definitely happy.
Colourful, cheerfully extreme costumes by Samantha Robinson aid the numerous character changes in Nick Lane’s unpretentious production and the two actors, Amy Thompson and Frazer Hammill, have fun in a wide range of parts and, even when the corridor to Fairyland is blocked, keep open the channels of communication with an audience which greets them at the end as friends rather than performers.
-Ron Simpson
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