Part of
Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett, is showing at the O’Reilly Theatre this week. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Steven Briggs, a name most Pratchett fans will be familiar with – he’s the guy who wrote the Discworld Companion and did theatre adaptations of the Guards series. The production definitely has some high points, but overall suffers from some quite serious flaws.
The biggest problem it has to contend with is the source material. Wyrd Sisters is quite a dense book. It has an awful lot going on, a very large supporting cast, several parallel storylines, and a fifteen year time-slip in the middle. It contains not only a play within a play, but plays within the play within a play. It’s about as complex as light comic fantasy gets and you just can’t fit it all into a two and a half hour performance. This would be bad enough in itself, but the adaptation makes some very peculiar decisions about what to leave out and what to put in. It includes a Narrator, who provides the “This is the Discworld…” speech which begins most of the early Discworld books, as well as other fragments lifted directly from the source material. On the other hand they cut out a lot of the scenes with the players, meaning that when Tomjon shows up at the end, you don’t really have any idea who he is, why he’s there, or why he passes up a perfectly good Kingdom to be a strolling player.
In other words, it’s a hard play to put on, and the current production is neither spectacularly good nor spectacularly bad. Performances are somewhat variable. The principles all perform reasonably well, although some of them seemed to be focusing a little too much on their accents. There are particularly strong performances from Claire Stevenson as the naïve young Magrat Garlick, and from Rob Morgan as the scenery-chewing Duke Felmet. Amongst the supporting cast James Reid’s hammy Vitoller and Rob Hemmens’ faintly camp Hwel are also rather fun. A lot of the extras mumbled their lines – although this may just have been a first night problem.
The technical side of the play lets it down a little. The lighting is noticeably poor, with actors frequently standing in darkness, or wandering out of the lit area of the stage. There is some good use of sound effects, and one rather fine use of incidental music. At times it feels almost as if the company felt that Pratchett’s book was strong enough to support a play without any of the trappings of theatricality.
The bottom line: is it worth your £7.00 (£5.50 concessions)? It would have taken something really special to convert Wyrd Sisters convincingly into a stage play, and I’m not sure this is it. If you’re really into Pratchett, it might be worth a look. Otherwise it might be best to skip it.
The biggest problem it has to contend with is the source material. Wyrd Sisters is quite a dense book. It has an awful lot going on, a very large supporting cast, several parallel storylines, and a fifteen year time-slip in the middle. It contains not only a play within a play, but plays within the play within a play. It’s about as complex as light comic fantasy gets and you just can’t fit it all into a two and a half hour performance. This would be bad enough in itself, but the adaptation makes some very peculiar decisions about what to leave out and what to put in. It includes a Narrator, who provides the “This is the Discworld…” speech which begins most of the early Discworld books, as well as other fragments lifted directly from the source material. On the other hand they cut out a lot of the scenes with the players, meaning that when Tomjon shows up at the end, you don’t really have any idea who he is, why he’s there, or why he passes up a perfectly good Kingdom to be a strolling player.
In other words, it’s a hard play to put on, and the current production is neither spectacularly good nor spectacularly bad. Performances are somewhat variable. The principles all perform reasonably well, although some of them seemed to be focusing a little too much on their accents. There are particularly strong performances from Claire Stevenson as the naïve young Magrat Garlick, and from Rob Morgan as the scenery-chewing Duke Felmet. Amongst the supporting cast James Reid’s hammy Vitoller and Rob Hemmens’ faintly camp Hwel are also rather fun. A lot of the extras mumbled their lines – although this may just have been a first night problem.
The technical side of the play lets it down a little. The lighting is noticeably poor, with actors frequently standing in darkness, or wandering out of the lit area of the stage. There is some good use of sound effects, and one rather fine use of incidental music. At times it feels almost as if the company felt that Pratchett’s book was strong enough to support a play without any of the trappings of theatricality.
The bottom line: is it worth your £7.00 (£5.50 concessions)? It would have taken something really special to convert Wyrd Sisters convincingly into a stage play, and I’m not sure this is it. If you’re really into Pratchett, it might be worth a look. Otherwise it might be best to skip it.