Marianne Dreams

Synopsis

On her tenth birthday, Marianne runs a fever and to her horror she’s soon confined to bed. She picks up a pencil and starts to draw to fill her time. That night Marianne dreams. Transported into her own picture, she discovers she has the power to change her dreams. As she draws by day and dreams by night, she soon realises the consequences of her actions and finds that she’s not alone - a sick boy called Mark exists not only in her dreams but also in her waking reality. Age 7+

Our Review:

20 December 2007

The growth industry of new theatre pieces made from children’s books is a seasonal phenomenon. This year, after Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse at the National and Herge’s Tintin at the Playhouse – both highly imaginative productions – comes Moira Buffini’s daring adaptation of Catherine Storr’s Marianne Dreams at the Almeida.

Although slightly precious and self-conscious in its deployment of physical movement to convey a world of dreams, Buffini’s short play, which runs for 80 minutes without an interval, is an efficient and skilful distillation of the novel. Marianne is a ten-year-old girl confined to bed for six weeks after contracting a mystery illness during a riding lesson.

While sulking under the duvet, she finds a magic pencil in her grandmother’s work box and draws a house on a prairie. Her adventures in the world of her own creation form a parallel life to her own, and her recovery from illness ...

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Latest User Review

rds - 5 January 2008:

It just didn't happen although it had, at times, all the ingredients to make it do so. There were moments however when it was truly embarrassing as when, on the night I went, a rather stout Marianne pranced around the stage in balletic sequences. Neither Moira Buffini, the adaptor, nor Will Tucket, the director/ choreographer, seem to be up for the job. I found myself wincing at some of the dialogue, and even a young audience would have found some of this too trite. Having said that it's not a total wash out. The staging was clever, and could have been more so. The final scenes showed some "heart" which it needed displaying earlier on. A difficult piece to translate to the stage for sure, but this unfortunate effort should not put off any future attempts. Whether, as it is, it is really for the intended audience the Almeida seemed to think it is remains to be seen. I'd give it 4/10 with a "See Me"! LOL!...

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