Into The Woods

The current production to set up camp in the beautiful Belgrade studio is _The Night Queen_: a family show just over an hour long with no interval. The show tells the tell of a young girl called Pamina (Sarah Middleton) and her life under her mollycoddling but loving single father (Dan Willis). Eventually, seduced into the woods by a little bird called Popinjay and desperate for adventure, Pamina encounters the beautiful but fearsome Night Queen (Naomi Lee Schulke) who sets her a task; to find the magic orb in a temple and bring it to her in exchange for being made her princess.

The tale sounds like standard fairytale fodder at first and, as the play begins, one is lead to feel it is a series of traditional children’s story clichés shuffled and replaced in a different order; there are elements of Alice In Wonderland, of The Wizard Of Oz and even Harry Potter creeping into Phillip Monks’ script but the play always manages to outweigh its traditional roots with real and unusual heart. If there is one thing _The Night Queen_ has in bucket loads, it is sincerity.

The show is very much family oriented with a simple plot, dazzling characters who are given a chance to act but seem tempered away from moments of more mature emotional displays (some of the Queen’s madness is clearly reigned back by the director as is some of the father’s rage, both justifiable choices when considering the audience) and filled with moments of humour and even a few jokes just for the parents (a brilliant moment of the single father asking his daughter if she had any attractive teachers at her new school to ‘bring home for dinner’ was particularly great) as well as a variety of intriguing storytelling devices.

A series of spectacularly designed puppets and costumes are used to create an array of supporting characters thanks to the backstage talent of Hannah Proops and Dawn Alsopp who must also be complimented for a simply spectacular use of stage; a single ramp is able to become a hidden doorway, a bedroom, a forest scene and a temple doorway with extreme ease and the actors remaining in character throughout scene changes added an extra dimension (for example, the father aiding his daughter to flip open trap doors in the closing scenes.) However, their use of music- songs with new words to the tune of classic moments from the score of ‘The Magic Flute’ fell a bit flat; whilst beautifully sung and wonderfully arranged by Christopher Ash they felt jarring in an otherwise youthful production and could have done with being a bit catchier. Nonetheless, the young members of the audience were enthralled throughout.

Sarah Middleton’s Pamina at first feels a bit of an archetypal innocent blithe young girl, but as time goes by she fills the character with so much heart and charm that you cannot help but love her and she comes out one’s favourite character. Dan Willis made an excellent job of the potentially quite dry part of the father and did a wonderful job as Zorastro the temple guardian and as the owl, but his parts lacked much in the way of differentiation beyond the odd speech quirk, and this was unavoidable considering even the songs for the characters were using the same piece of Mozart. Naomi Lee Schulke must also be commended for an excellent Night Queen who is sassy without being cruel and who is vicious without being psychotic. She is just right for the eventual climax, which calls for a great deal of sympathy to come from us the audience. However, a critique must be made of the times the latter two actors employed the puppets; a bit more in terms of engaging with the creatures they conjured up would be great as the animals were filled with life, but this was weakened by their attempts to become camouflaged in their black clothes.

All in all, _The Night Queen_ is a production worth going to see if only to see there are people out there other than Kneehigh that are producing interesting and charming children’s theatre.

_The Night Queen_ runs at The Belgrade Theatre until the 11th June, tickets are £6 and£4 for kids and concessions. Saturday 4th’s show has a pre-show Q&A at 6.30 and there is a writing workshop 4-5.30pm on the 11th June for £4.