The Animals and Children Took to the Streets

Synopsis

Seamlessly synchronizing live music, performance and storytelling with film and animation. Trust no-one. Suspect even your own shadow. Welcome to the Bayou, a part of the city feared and loathed, wherein lies the infamous Bayou Mansions: a stinking sprawling tenement block, where curtain-twitchers and peeping-toms live side by side, and the wolf... is always at the door. When Agnes Eaves and her daughter arrive late one night, does it signal hope in this hopeless place, or has the real horror only just begun?

Our Review:

13 December 2010

It could be easy to tag 1927’s The Animals and Children Took to the Streets as style over substance; it is none too shabby on the eye and the story, though sweet, feels in parts quite light. But timing is everything and on a day of epic student protest, the story of angry children taking to the streets to fight against an unfair social system, seems instead eerily prescient.



We follow pretty Agnes Eves into the dark dank world of Red Herring Street. This dodgy neighbourhood, full of vice and melancholic caretakers (who rather brilliantly speak only in sardonic voice over) is brought to wriggling life by Paul Barritt’s mischievous film and animation. A sparkling and robust score, performed with both gusto and grace by Lillian Henley, underpins Barritt’s constantly shifting world. It is a landscape littered with intelligent style references to 1930s Bauhaus poster design whilst revelling in naught cartoonish comedy.


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Latest User Review

Gareth James - 30 December 2010:

A few years ago, I took some weekend visitors to BAC to see one of those Edinburgh ‘ones that got away’. It was called ‘Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea’ and it was enthralling – big hit with us all. A combination of film / animation, performance and music, it was impossible to describe but impossible not to fall in love with it. It’s taken the young company 1927 a while to come up with their second show, but it builds on it and moves them forward significantly. Before it starts, you’re forced to engage with leopardskin-clad usherettes with customer service skills that can best be described as diffident, contemptuous and downright rude! Then Paul Barrit’s extraordinary film – part cartoon, part silent movie, sometimes sweet, sometimes edgy - starts to play on three screens. It continues throughout, with three actor musicians – Suzanne Andrade (also writer / director), Esme Appleton (also costumes) & Lillian Henley (also music) – interacting with it to tell the stories of the inhabitants of a block of flats. The virtuosity is breathtaking, the technical skills positively awesome and you are swept away with the creativity whilst being thoroughly entertained by something like nothing you’ve ever seen before. 1927 have truly created a genre all of their own and I can’t wait for their next show. The delay since the first seems to have been the result of a world tour – I can’t think of a better advert for British creativity, innovation and ingenuity. I can’t recommend this show enough. GO! ...

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