Wolf Witch Giant Fairy, Linbury Theatre review: innovative and energetic family fun
Once upon a time, our opera companies did not worry too much about young audiences: an occasional schools matinee of a masterpiece, or an education project offered as an add-on to the real thing, was enough to attract the next generation of opera-goers. Now, the challenge of attracting new young audiences is at the top of everyone’s agenda, and ensuring that our opera houses have enthusiasts and ticket-buyers in the future is critical.
So all credit to the Royal Opera for embarking on a creative collaboration with the innovative theatre company Little Bulb, and producing this new Christmas show for families and children from about five years upwards.
Wolf Witch Giant Fairy is an energetic ensemble show which certainly seemed to grip the young audience in the Linbury Theatre; the girl in the row behind me kept up a breathless running commentary on this retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story, with the evidently relieved pay-off line “there she is – she’s alive!”.
The show has been created, devised and performed by a versatile 10-person ensemble who all (in the manner of the John Doyle economy-size stagings of musicals) sing and act and play instruments. Nothing if not ambitious, the story tries to weave together the elements of Little Red Riding Hood with a handful of characters from other fairy tales, including Baba Yaga the witch, Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk, the Golden Harp and the Golden Goose.
Led by Peter Brathwaite’s charismatic ringmaster narrator, and driven by Clare Beresford’s lively and saintly Red Riding Hood, the text arguably crams in too much detail for us to grasp. But Samuel Wyer’s sets - and especially his furry costumes for the wolf, the giant, and the cat - are so winning that we are constantly kept visually entertained.
As a theatre show, it’s a success, and reflects Little Bulb’s skill at collaboratively inventing this kind of material. The issue is that this is described as an opera, or at least family friendly music-theatre, and the challenge of spinning jointly devised music into this mix is trickier.
Music director Dominic Conway suggests that the score is based on folk traditions from across Europe, which would provide an apt basis for improvisation, but the result does not quite have the richness and variety that would imply. The harmonic language is stolid and unvaried, a few chords used endlessly, with repeated patterns and percussion, and the tunes just don’t lift off.
Perhaps this won’t matter to young audiences, but it does remind us for the future that the one thing that will reliably draw audiences new and old to this form of theatre is great, unforgettable music. Opera cannot do without it.
Until Jan 3. Tickets: www.roh.org.uk
