How to Beat a Giant

Published Monday 5 November 2007 at 11:00 by Barbara Lewis

There can’t be many children who haven’t pretended to go to sleep only to spend half the night wide awake. They might even have spent the time acting out a favourite story and forcing a reluctant sibling to join in.

From this ordinary starting point, writer Diane Samuels leaps to the logical next step as a mythical giant, conjured in a torch-lit bedroom, comes to life and turns the tables on a bullying big sister.

It isn’t the most finely imagined of the Unicorn’s productions and it takes us a while to accept adults playing the parts of children with northern accents you might well find annoying, but the play’s emotional violence is psychologically accurate.

Under Titania Krimpas’ direction, Ellie Piercy as elder sister Lenny, in turn playing the part of fearless Molly Whuppie, is herself a mini play director, energetically ordering younger brother Sniff (Leander Denny) how to act a stupid giant she defeats.

A greater challenge is the supposedly real life giant, played by Antonia Kemi Coker, who earlier is Jo the babysitter. This could just be Jo in platform shoes, teaching Lenny a lesson, but the play prefers not to dwell on that possibility and instead to leave the audience half-believing in big, bad giants.