BWW Reviews: MY MOTHER TOLD ME NOT TO STARE, The Unicorn Theatre, March 20 2010

Almost a hundred years ago, Russian formalist Vladimir Propp analysed folk tales into irreducible elements of plotting and characters. I was grateful for my rudimentary understanding of his work as Finegan Kruckemeyer's story and Martyn Harry's music were fused into Theatre Hullabaloo and Action Transport Theatre extraordinary operetta for children, "My Mother told me not to stare". With a plot that presents such familiar devices as neglectful parents, unrequited love and exile as punishment for rule-breaking, the audience can hang on to something familiar as everything else spins wildly out to the more distant reaches of what theatre can do.

Tom Bates, bewigged in the style of Hugh Laurie's George from Blackadder the Third, acts as a narrator and starts conventionally, but is soon using his soaring counter-tenor voice to sing his lines as other members of the cast play the strange, dissonant, but ultimately beautiful music that underlines the operetta's tension to a sometimes almost unbearable pitch. Before long, lifesize puppets are singing, projections of characters are appearing on the circular screen at the back of the stage and children are chanting rules in the Town Square and disappearing when guilty of the pettiest of infractions.

Director Nina Hajiyianni has assembled a multi-talented cast and is ambitious enough to push even their talents to the limit. Andrew Sparling (clarinet and baritone) conveys the horror of a lost son in a hideously beautiful lament sung with Eleanor Meynell (soprano and piano), whom we see later as a grotesque, masked nurse in the terrifying Fixing Kitchen. Ms Meynell's piano is a delight that weaves in and out of the play, providing a musical illustration of the hopes and fears of the children. As the two thwarted lovers, Gary Albert Hughes (flute and tenor) and Eva Karell (violin and soprano), give intense performances, full of desire and pain. Mr Hughes' Bobby contorts his angular body, as Bobby's mind twists and turns, wrestling with his conditioning to obey absurd rules and his growing understanding that right and wrong are not determined by compliance with what others demand, but in understanding what right and wrong really mean. Ms Karell, only recently graduated from the Royal College of Music, shows real star quality as the feisty Emily who leads Bobby to adulthood. Ms Karell, a Swede who has performed in Germany and the UK, is a performer of whom we will hear much in the future..

The plot has echoes of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and the design elements of Tim Burton's aesthetic, but "My Mother told me not to stare" isn't really like anything else. Children can enjoy it, but this operetta is really for anyone who wishes to explore what theatre can do in 2010. You can catch this extraordinary production on tour now and in festivals throughout the summer.   

 

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