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Anton and Olaf, A Fruity Fairytale review
What:
Anton & Olaf, A Fruity Fairytale
When:
January 21 – February 1
Where:
La Mama Theatre
Written
and Directed by: Chris Molyneaux
Composed
by: Zenta Schubert
Performed
by: Jack Beeby, Chris Molyneaux, Russ Pirie, Zenta Schubert, and Annabel Warmington
Anton & Olaf, A Fruity
Fairytale has all the ingredients of a brilliant holiday
children’s puppet show. Playing at La
Mama these school holidays, this Fruity
Fairytale is an epic quest of mythic proportions.
The
show has all of the essential elements including feuding princes, a might
sword, a wise old sage, castles, mountains, rivers of silver and gold,
and...cups of tea? There is a story
teller and a bard, and excited children in the audience. How can it go wrong? And yet it does.
Molyneaux
has established the skeleton of a magical story – a tale of valour, endurance,
and wisdom – bet he seems to have forgotten to let the performers in on the
details. Most of the show is improvised
to no special effect.
Improvisation
is an advanced performance skill and even the best at the craft generally
create a strong architecture to work within.
I would have thought that, at the very least, the three great tasks the
Princes must complete would be clear.
Unfortunately, as Anton comments at one point, the Wise Warrior Isabella
(a great puppet, by the way!) “is making this up as she goes along. Hurry up!”
It
takes a half an hour to even begin the premise of the tale. Way to long for children. That first 30 minutes is spent with long,
tedious introductions to the location and the characters. Part of the reason for this is because
Molyneaux includes the children in the finishing of the puppets – giving them
faces. The problem is there is not
enough variety to make this interesting past the first one. An array of fruit to choose for the heads
would be funny. A whole bunch of eyes
and noses to choose from would be funny.
Instead there are two of each and there are only two puppets being made,
so after the first one there is no theatricality left.
Speaking
of theatricality, there is a strangely glaring flaw in this production which
has me completely boggled. Molyneaux is
an experienced designer and has created fabulous mountains and castles out of
cardboard coffee cups and toilet roles, etc – but the whole thing is in
brown! Even the puppets are brown
cardboard. This is a show created for 5
years and up and there is no colour?
Even the mighty sword is not shiny.
This
problem is mildly addressed when the puppeteers show up. Beeby and Pirie are in lovely bright colours
with great hats...but why would you have the puppeteers more interesting than
the puppets?
Schubert,
the show’s bard, plays the accordion at the start and the end of the show, but
no attempt has been made to use music to heighten the emotions in the play,
create sound effects or pick up the pace.
I had this strange sensation that this show was created like an xray,
with everything being the opposite of what it was supposed to be.
The
show is over an hour long and feels longer.
This is not helped by the fact that Warmington has obviously not been
given a script to work from. Anton & Olaf actually has a lot of
potential to be a great show, but right now it just isn’t.
Monday 2 February 2015
Sunday 1 February 2015
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