At Mappa Mundi |
| Mappa Mundi- The Canterbury Tales , Theatr Mwldan, Cardigan , March 15, 2006 |
A lone actor comes onto the stage, hangs his head and says nothing. Already the audience filling Cardigan’s Theatr Mwldan is tittering and giggling, possibly due to the fact that the actor has a donkey’s head upon his shoulders. When nothing has really happened on stage and yet you’re laughing you know you are in for a good evening.Mappa Mundi brought their interpretation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to Cardigan last Friday and Saturday nights and how we did laugh. Six actors attired in richly coloured medieval robes took us on a bawdy, raucous and irreverent romp through selected Canterbury Tales directed by Phylpip Harries. On a simply decorated stage, hung with a clever combination of medieval banner and ripped up roadmap, a versatile and hardworking cast bought Chaucer's time tested tales to life. They used a set and props encompassed within a tardis-like cart, a basic wooden frame on wheels which extended and retracted to become in turn a bedroom, a chicken coop, a shadow theatre and a carpenter's shop. All seven tales, adapted by Keiron Self, were rendered in the structure of Chaucer’s original, the rhyming couplets shot through with twentieth and twenty first century references from e-bay to bird flu, from the A team to the Carpenters. The show started with a brief biography of the great man himself. Chaucer, portrayed by Keiron Self as a fey youth who’d rather write poetry than wrestle bears through to his career as ambassador to the English court and his death before the completion of the Canterbury Tales. The pace was pure pantomime and the level immediately accessible, to a mock chorus of “non compos mentis” the cast transformed the set for the Reeve’s Tale. A rectangular stage block on casters becoming a punt for two camp students to wend their way downriver to con the violently trumping Windy Miller and sleep with his wife and daughter. "I'll ruffle the feathers round your tight parson's nose!" The conclusion of the Tale was followed by a manic, gospel preaching, musical interlude incorporating well-choreographed dance routines and reminiscent of an over hyped madcap version of the musical Godspell. Thence followed the Pardoner’s Tale, the menacing story of avarice and double dealing presided over by the physical presence of death on the stage. Providing a dark contrast to the smutty and scatological nature of the preceding tale and the madcap energy of the musical interlude. A highland fling saw the stage transformed into a chicken coop for three fussy Scottish chickens all clutching their handbags and bobbing their heads, who acted out the Nun’s Priest Tale in broad Scottish accents. Their rampant cock had one of my favourite lines in the play, proclaiming pre-coitally: “I’ll ruffle the feathers round your tight parson’s nose” before taking his lady hen! After the interval we were treated to a version of Chaucer’s own Canterbury Tale, that is the story of Sir Topaz told by the character of Chaucer within the Canterbury Tales. The was presented as a piece of shadow puppetry, the narrative sung and offset by a shrieking Monty Python-esque chorus. The Wife of Bath followed telling her tale in a convincing Bath burr and a broad brimmed hat and changing easily between protagonist and narrator. The Second Nun’s Priest Tale deflated the second half somewhat for me. An overlong musical interpretation of the story of Saint Cecilia who refused to be martyred despite being boiled alive in her own bathhouse and being decapitated. Suitably enough it began with a version of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive and then segued into a slower number I didn’t recognise, rewritten as Punch Me in the Morning. There is only so much humour you can get out of torture especially in the context of last week’s news stories about Iraqi prisoners. It didn’t feel funny just uncomfortable. Windy Miller and his lovely girls The humour value of the second half redeemed itself with the Miller’s tale, told in over-inflated mock Dylan Thomas verse and set in a “blackety black” town with an unpronounceable name. Cleverly intertwined, Thomas’ Reverend Eli Jenkins became Absalom Chaucer’s parish clerk besotted with a young Welsh slapper in a tale of drugs, bed hopping, cuckoldry and of course farting. Mappa Mundi’s Canterbury Tales were irreverent, inventive, downright random at times and full of manic energy, delivered by six actors switching easily between character, accent and mood and all working equally hard. I must admit to not having picked up Chaucer since the National Curriculum dictated that I must back in the hazy days of A-levels. This all singing, all dancing, pacey, salacious and scatological rendering proved a perfect reintroduction. Fourteen years later after my initial encounter I’m digging out my Chaucer from the dusty depths of my bookshelf. Though you’ve missed them in Cardigan the Canterbury Tales, a joint project between Creu Cymru, Mappa Mundi and Theatr Mwldan, are now making their very own pilgrimage through Wales. They are coming to Milford Haven’s Torch Theatre on April 12th. See below for the complete tour dates. Wednesday 1st March: Courtyard, Hereford Friday 3rd March: St. Donats Arts Centre Saturday 4th March: Borough Theatre Wednesday 8th March: Theatr Stiwt Saturday 11th March: Aberystwyth Arts Centre Friday 17th March: Welfare Saturday 18th March: Wyeside Thursday 23rd March: Pavilion, Porthcawl Friday 24th March: Blackwood Miners Saturday 25th March: Theatr Hafren Wednesday 29th March: Theatr Brycheiniog Thursday 30th - Friday 31st March: Taliesin Arts Centre Saturday 1st April: Ludlow Assembly Rooms Tuesday 4th - Wednesday 5th April: Sherman Theatre Thursday 6th - Friday 7th April: Theatr Gwynedd Saturday 8th April: Theatr Ardudwy Wednesday 12th April: Torch Theatre Thursday 13th April: Coliseum |
Reviewed by: pembrokshiretv web site |
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