The Magic Toyshop

Synopsis

The summer she was fifteen, Melanie stole out into the moonlit garden wearing only her mother's wedding dress. She felt drunk on her imagination, caught up in yards of cool satin and the endless night sky. Surprised by her own daring, she threw off the dress and climbed up an apple tree back to the safety of her bedroom. But tragic news would shatter her romantic world. Overnight, Melanie would be cast adrift to London and the shocking truths of The Magic Toyshop.

Our Review:

18 January 2002

Condensing the complexities of a 200-page novel into two hours of stage time is no mean feat. But if there's any company who can succeed, Shared Experience is it. They are, in my mind, the undisputed masters of literary adaptations, responsible for breathtaking reinterpretations of classics such as Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Eliot's Mill on the Floss and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Their latest page-to-stage offering is Angela Carter's 1967 novel, The Magic Toyshop, about 15-year-old Melanie whose life takes a nasty turn after her parents' death. Though set recently in south London, Toyshop - adapted by Bryony Lavery and directed by Rebecca Gatward - retains Shared Experience's familiar otherworldliness, thanks to the company's stylised, and intensely physical, approach combined with Carter's own narrative use of myth and magic.

The production's Biblical connotations are particularly overt. As the sto...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com - 1 February 2002:

I had my long-anticipated opportunity to catch up with Shared Experience's latest offering at the tiny Soho Theatre last night. It's a wonderful evening: thought-provoking, funny, visually dazzling and very nearly trail-blazing. (Not completely original, though, since there's rather a lot of Mill On The Flossery in it. But that's a small point.) I do hope the speculation of a transfer comes to something, because this deserves the widest possible audience....

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