| Friends for Dinner by Mark Ryan |
| First presented in 2006 by Spectacle Theatre |
|
cast size:unkn
synopsis: From the team that brought you 'The Lazy Ant' and 'Where's Andy?', 'Friends For Dinner' is a colourful, funny story that follows the adventures of three little aliens who land on a strange planet. Written for children ages 5 - 7, 'Friends For Dinner' links the topics and themes integral to the KS1 Science Curriculum. |
There is 1 review of Spectacle Theatre's Friends for Dinner in our database:
|
Friends for Dinner
by Mark Ryan
|
[print] |
|
venue St James's Junior School, Caerphilly |
|
|
March 14, 2006 |
|
| For the second time this week I am in the wrong place: in the audience of a show not made for me. At Chapter Arts Centre I was an Anglophone critic witnessing a production aimed exclusively at Welsh-speakers and learners there to enjoy a play that was not the proper subject of dramatic criticism. And here I am, half on a very small chair with a couple of classes of seven year-olds in a school hall on the edge of Caerphilly. At least I do not need surtititles - and Spectacle Theatre on form can provide a theatrical experience of such intensity and sensitivity that it matters not who the target audience is. With the best young people’s theatre, adults can feel privileged rather than estranged to share the experience. Friends for Dinner, written and composed by Mark Ryan, has a chaotically colourful set from Angharad Roberts and an apparently simple storyline about a trio of aliens who have come to colonise earth because our rubbish dumps are such a good source of potential building materials for the homeless space travellers. The dump’s resident rodent, however, has other plans for Piffle, Ping and Plop, seeing them more as the ingredients of a three-course meal. But what's this ? Lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Ozymandias in a little tale for an age group defintely pre-Romantic poets ? And what about the visual gag built into the set, where a defunct washing-machine is an eco-friendly model and the discarded (rather than recycled) soap-powder box is also an expensive right-on brand ? Product placing ? Cynical wit ? So Friends for Dinner is maybe a bit more than it seems - and there's even a bit of Pirandellian persona-person ambiguity in the persistent cries from the sharp young audience that little Plop has reappeared as the villain, Percy Rat. “Where’s Plop ?” ask Piffle and Ping. “He IS the rat” comes the reply. In fact, audience participation is assumed, even if it’s not meant to be quite as vigorous, and the kids manage to ignore the clever-adult references and enjoy the story with noisy enthusiasm. Just what else they get I’m not sure, but there is a comprehensive teacher’s pack. My reservations, however, are more to do with the delivery, which seems to me to be rather variable, as much as the lack of content. In this case it seemed to me that there three different styles of acting from the three performers; and while it has become a YPT convention that the company sit with the young audience before the show, partly to demystify the process, partly to reassure them, partly to create a rapport, such friendliness can create problems. Friends for Dinner is not Spectacle’s best work – which on its day can be the best anywhere. But, like that other show that was not really made for me, here to a point I must defer to the audience – and who am I to argue when those young people so obviously loved it ? |
|
| reviewer: David Adams |
|
| If you know of any other existing review, or if you have any more information on Friends for Dinner, (perhaps you were in the production or were the author or director) then please use the form below to send us the details |