January 28, 2010
Despite its whimsical name, this coming-of-age story by Angela Carter is far from the twee-sounding fantasy the title conjures. Fifteen-year-old Melanie puts on her mother’s wedding dress once night and tears it climbing the apple tree; the next day she and her siblings are orphans. Leaving her comfortable family life and devoted spinster nanny Mrs. Rundle, she enters the magic toyshop of her oppressive Uncle Philip, finds a new family, and gradually comes to terms with the reality of love and sexuality in a place far from her girlhood fantasies. Add to this live grotesque puppets, a bildungsroman love story, an innovative soundtrack with Irish jigs, some customary incest (this is Angela Carter we’re talking about) and there you have The Magic Toyshop, a piece of masterful theatre and well worth your ticket money. Melanie, played by Bella Hammad, is a precocious protagonist, endearingly candid about her desire for marriage, or at least, she prays, for sex. Hammad captures the spirited teenage idealism beautifully, with fresh honesty; she is complemented by the coy and charismatic (if scruffy) Finn (Ollo Clark), and much of the story centres around their fumbling, burgeoning romance.
Given Carter’s surreal, often difficult prose and dialogue, this adaptation for the stage has worked impressively well. The script loses the sometimes prosaic quality of dialogue from the novel, keeping it simpler, and making it often deliciously funny. Visually, the direction, richly detailed backdrop and elegant choreography are stunning to watch: the characters of the three puppets, enacting the id of Melanie’s subconscious, were a beautiful addition. The play opens with the puppets unfurling from a box: white-skinned, limbs contorted and erratic as they tried to stand, accompanied by the string quartet’s disturbing pizzicato – a haunting opening, later becoming a recurring theme and definite highlight of the play.
The whole production is characterised by an innovative ability to transform the surreal into what works for the stage: the enacting of Leda and the Swan was clever and simultaneously chilling, to the credit of the cast and the production team, avoiding the cost and potential bathos of making a mechanised swan. At the play’s end, the collapse of the toyshop is met with the literal collapse of the stage in a powerful finale, and Melanie and Finn are left alone with each other, finally unconstrained and free in an uncertain future.
Given Carter’s surreal, often difficult prose and dialogue, this adaptation for the stage has worked impressively well. The script loses the sometimes prosaic quality of dialogue from the novel, keeping it simpler, and making it often deliciously funny. Visually, the direction, richly detailed backdrop and elegant choreography are stunning to watch: the characters of the three puppets, enacting the id of Melanie’s subconscious, were a beautiful addition. The play opens with the puppets unfurling from a box: white-skinned, limbs contorted and erratic as they tried to stand, accompanied by the string quartet’s disturbing pizzicato – a haunting opening, later becoming a recurring theme and definite highlight of the play.
The whole production is characterised by an innovative ability to transform the surreal into what works for the stage: the enacting of Leda and the Swan was clever and simultaneously chilling, to the credit of the cast and the production team, avoiding the cost and potential bathos of making a mechanised swan. At the play’s end, the collapse of the toyshop is met with the literal collapse of the stage in a powerful finale, and Melanie and Finn are left alone with each other, finally unconstrained and free in an uncertain future.