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Wizzpoppingly good fun
The BFG
Birmingham Rep
****
IMAGINE the noise of a squabbling murmation of
starlings, amplify it it a thousand times and you have that solid wall
of noise that greets you as you enter a crowded swimming pool in school
holidays – or when you
walk into Birmingham Rep’s House on an
afternoon performance packed with a murmation of schoolchildren. The fact
that The BFG reduced them to attentive silence, apart from appropriate
laughs, gasps, oohs and ahhs, and delight at mentions of bodily
functions, is a tribute to the hard working cast attempting to bring
Roald Dahl’s children’s book to life. Bodily functions,
incidentally, are the banker in the world of children. No matter how
well brung up, or well behaved the little darlings
are, any mentions of the waste disposal
arrangements of the human body will always bring squeals of delight. In the BDG’s case, the star
was whizzpopping, a sign of, should we say, a gastronomically expressive
bottom, accentuated by drinking frobscottle, a tipple
The Whizzpopping Song, with
its suitably rasping sound effects, cue trombones,
was a source of universal merriment and
delight - particularly when it was beyond the
control of teachers.
There was an inherent problem
for David Wood in adapting Dahl’s much loved book for the stage in that
there is a distinct shortage of 70ft tall actors, or even 7ft tall
actors for that matter, to play giants. But Director Teresa Ludovico
and designer Robert Innes Hopkins get around that by imaginative shadow
figures projected on a back wall and only seeing the huge hands and
enormous feet of the bad giants in the flesh, or polystyrene or
whatever, lumbering on at the back or sides of the stage. As for the BFG, the Big
Friendly Giant himself, Joshua Manning is a tall lad, so add built up
boots and a tiny Sophie in the shape of Madeleine Haynes on this
occasion (Chloe Hawthorn and Lara Wollington share the role) and there
is enough illusion there to feed the imagination. Manning has a difficult role
in that the BFG speaks in a mix of giant language, with the likes of
snozzcumber, the foul tasting talking cucumber, and fractured English.
Not the easiest to learn. He appears a sinister giant at
first but as we find out that he is a kindly sort under a gruff
exterior, a giant who doesn’t eat children like all the other giants,
but is a vegetarian, and captures bad dreams before they can reach
children, and blows good dreams into the minds of sleeping children. After he captures Sophie we
fear the worst – and the worst would have made it a very short book and
even shorter show - we see a growing relationship between the BFG
and the little girl, who is an orphan, making her, like the BFG, an
outsider in her world. The first half setting the
scene is a little slow, but people who have never read the book need at
least a chance to understand what is going on, but the pace picks up in
the second half with the wonderfully camp Queen of England, played by
Mike Goodenough, and the military caricatures of head of the army, Nyron
Levy and head of the air force Danny Chase. The budget presumable did not
stretch to Miss Saigon style helicopters so we had to m
A giant hand trying to escape and reach the light gave a gruesome hint of the malevolent world full of hungry giants hidden beneath the stage and kids do love a bit of gruesome. With a story it is impossible
to translate directly to the stage it needs plenty of theatrical
trickery to pull it of and Italian director Ludovico, who was last in
Birmingham with the stunning I Was a Rat, to celebrate the Rep’s
centenary, has managed it with some style, aided by some dramatic and
atmospheric lighting from Peter Mumford. The remaining cast, Jemma
Geanaus, Joey Hickman, TJ Holmes, Natasha Lewis, Mei Mac and Nicholas
Prasad, who had half a dozen parts each, gave us giants, servants, a
unicorn, a collection of head lice, a royal corgi, dreams and all manner
of thoughts and creatures who across the pages of the book. Music came from Martin Riley,
the musical director, and his trio along with four of the cast, playing
cello, accordion and trombones. My grandson, who is not that
familiar with the book, being a little young for the story – how do you
explain a dream, for example, to someone who has never had one - was
entranced by the whole thing but then he does soak up theatre like a
sponge. I do wonder though if children, or indeed the adults that take
them, will appreciate the stage adaptation fully if they have never read
the book. Comments from children coming
out ranged from brilliant and awesome to one group of boys wondering of
you could buy something like frobscottle to provide instant flatulence,
which, in a way, is a sort of commendation. The Rep’s age guide is seven
upwards, and I suppose the child eating giants, even largely unseen,
could be a little frightening for some small minds, but people know
their own children and grandchildren. Mine, much younger, never
flinched, while I know of one six-year-old who was frightened, so the
choice is yours. Just remember no children have been eaten in the
production . . . yet. To 21-10-15 Roger Clarke
04-11-14
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where
the bubbles go down rather than up, explaining its amazing propensity to
cause flatulence.
ake
do with the head of the airforce spinning impressively on a rope, as the
child snatching and eating giants were captured and flown back to London
to be dumped in a deep pit for evermore with only the evil tasting
snozzcumbers to eat.