Aesop’s Fables

Published Monday 2 April 2007 at 15:50 by Jeremy Brien

Aesop was probably an even better choice than the Bristol Old Vic realised for their Easter holiday children’s production, in a city currently being deafened by the sound of the rending of hair-shirts over the slave trade. For Aesop himself was a slave for most of his life on the Greek island of Samos, assembling the majority of his 650-plus fables before he was freed.

For an author/adapter as politically correct as Michael Morpurgo, it is surprising that nothing is made of this; what we do get is an imaginative retelling of a clutch of the best-known stories built around the theme of gentle persuasion often being the best form. Everything is set to a splendidly humorous score by Benji Bower, with the company’s familiar children’s theatre creative team of director Sally Cookson and designer Katie Sykes, also in fine form.

The tongue-in-cheek touches, such as the sheep being represented first by white balloons and then marshmallows in the Cry Wolf fable, appeal as much to the adults as their offspring, while a score that involves the likes of Soul, the Blues and Elvis has general appeal as well. Actors Chris Bianchi and Tom Wainwright are at their most knowing in the hilarious Tortoise-and-Hare fable, but for a single side-splitting cameo Bianchi’s gold lame-clad Italian night club singer representation of the Sun, in The Sun and The Wind fable, must take the global warming award.