The Stage

Faeries

Published Tuesday 15 July 2008 at 12:45 by Liz Arratoon

Royal Ballet guest artist Will Tuckett’s new show gives a fascinating glimpse into a magical world of fairies, fireflies and freaks. It combines Blind Summit’s wonderfully life-like puppets - manipulated by three of the cast and voiced by one of them - with dance, storytelling and music, composed by Martin Ward and played live by John-Paul Gandy and Derek Hannigan.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s story of Edie, a little girl lost in Kensington Gardens at night, is told in narrated Rupert the Bear rhyme and dialogue. At times quite gruesome, it is a classic struggle between good and evil set, slightly incongruously, during the Blitz.

Edie, played with relish by Charlotte Broom, helps the good fairies - including the tiny and feisty Anak, voiced by Mhairi Steenbock, and Ben Thompson’s fubsy Drone - to overcome the evil Dolour, a spidery, black puppet with a hideous mask-like face, played with no concerns about scaring the kids half to death by Curtis Jordan.

Michael Vale’s atmospheric set, lit by Katharine Williams, is forever shrouded in an eerie mist and comprises a forest of gnarled tree trunks, and - to the delight of the children, who at one strategic point all creep forward for a closer look- a wooden stage with various hidden compartments, and occasional fairy rings that light up.

Faeries is a small-scale show and the children sitting virtually in its fantasy world are totally absorbed by it, but the enthralling execution and many humourous touches mean that the adults are swept along with it, too.