The Mac, Belfast
***
The Mac's Christmas show comes to Belfast in association with the Egg, the children's space at the Theatre Royal Bath. Writer Matt Harvey and composer Thomas Hewitt Jones have focused their collective attention on one of the Grimm brothers' darker tales and transformed it into a thoroughly modern fable, with a feisty heroine in charge. She is sensible, plain speaking Emily (Doireann McKenna), daughter of a muddle-headed Miller (Tom Giles), who is so proud of her thrifty housekeeping skills that he boasts that she could spin straw into gold. He foolishly whispers this claim into the ear of the King (Michael Lavery), an idiotic, impecunious creature, caught up in tax returns and power trips. Thus is her unenviable fate sealed: fail in her gold-spinning and she will be executed; succeed and she will be married to the royal imbecile. But, unexpectedly, help is at hand in the grotesque form of the scheming imp Rumpelstiltskin, here portrayed by Jo Donnelly as a grimacing, bog-eyed punk.
Under Lotte Wakeham’s direction Colin Falconer’s set of tangled wooden struts and slatted walkways is disappointingly underused, as is the live band, which literally vanishes into the darkness the moment the lights go up. Harvey’s lyrics drive the storyline but try a little too hard to be subversive in placing emphasis on contemporary language and issues. While there is plenty of irony, particularly in Lavery’s performance, what is lacking is a credible sense of characterisation or motivation. Indeed there are sequences when the dialogue almost sinks under the weight of its own intentions, stranding the actors with nowhere to go.
The second act finds welcome momentum, with a mad game of name calling, taunting and revenge, a just reward for the young audience members who follow the demanding script with commendable attentiveness.
Ends January 3
