| Laughs, accessibility and historical accuracy. |
At Mappa Mundi |
| Mappa Mundi- Moll Flanders , Theatr Mwldan Cardigan , February 19, 2007 |
Mappa Mundi is a rather special theatre company.“Think of us as Brigadoon,” smiles founder-member Lloyd Llewelyn-Jones with that ambiguous mix of tongue-in-cheek irony, disingenuous humour and cultural referentialism that defines these most irreverent of classical reinventors. Brigadoon, of course, appeared only once every hundred years, whereas Mappa Mundi leaps into the must-see list of Welsh theatregoers briefly just once a year – and now is that Brigadoon moment, with The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders kicking off the first of its twenty performances throughout Wales next week. But you can see what he means. Mappa Mundi is one of the strangest of success stories in Welsh popular theatre. Founded fourteen years ago by a group of enthusiastic but not very experienced actors, a musician, a techie and a costume lecturer who wanted to offer irreverent takes on the classics, the company still has the same core team – but they just come back together every year to make a show that is virtually guaranteed to sell out. Today director Lynn Seymour still acts but now also runs her own business and is the mother of twins, designer Llewelyn-Jones is an academic and writer on classical cultures, composer Peter Knight is working on a musical and writes scores for film, radio and theatre, technician Ceri James has been lighting designer of all the shows at the Sherman while playwright Keiron Self is a prolific writer and performer for stage, television and radio, all busy people with different careers. Each with their own life, they keep in touch between the annual productions but only all meet when the new show starts taking shape. It has never been a conventional theatre company in that it has never had an office or a rehearsal space or a plan or, to be honest, the wholehearted support of the arts council, and one gets the impression they only got a new lease a life a few years ago when Creu Cymru, the touring agency, realised that this rather ad-hoc bunch of friends constituted the only group who could be guaranteed to fill Wales’s various theatres. But now they do have a home, although it must seem more like a holiday cottage where they gather for the annual get-together: Theatr Mwldan. If a Cardigan arts centre sounds an unlikely base (albeit rather Brigadoonish) for this rather urbane company, then you haven’t been to Theatr Mwldan recently – it’s a vibrant multi-purpose building that has developed remarkably since it opened twenty years ago on the site of the town’s disused abattoir. A ten-year development project attracted £7million from various sources and now Theatr Mwldan has an average of over 5,000 visitors through its doors every week. The partnership with Mappa Mundi is another aspect of Mwldan’s new status as a Regional Performing Arts Centre, giving it an even more exciting remit to create as well as present all kinds of work. Moll Flanders has come about under the co-producing partnership of Mappa Mundi, Theatr Mwldan and Creu Cymru, with the production part-funded by The Arts Council of Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government under the Arts Outside Cardiff scheme. Following last year’s hugely successful tour of Canterbury Tales, this is the second Mappa Mundi production created under this co-production arrangement, and Mwldan director Dilwyn Davies is enthusiastic about the benefits. “At Mwldan’s heart is the belief that the arts can deliver life-changing and life-enhancing experiences that have the power to change perceptions and increase tolerance, breaking down cultural divides and allowing greater understanding,” he says. “We want this innovative partnership to continue to give Mappa Mundi the vital opportunity to create great theatre, whilst the other two production partners offer their expertise - tour booking and administration by Creu Cymru, and marketing and production facilities by Theatr Mwldan.” We might not associate the picaresque Moll Flanders with a sleepy West Wales market town and we might even think, if our familiarity with eighteenth-century literary classics has been by way of television costume dramas, that the rakish characters spend most of their time ripping bodices, riding sweaty horses or haughty ladies and generally enjoying a life of refined debauchery in a tawdry metropolis full of gin-palaces. And, indeed, the tale of Moll Flanders has often been considerably spiced up since Daniel Defoe followed-up his bestselling Robinson Crusoe with his pretend-autobiography of the much put-upon Mrs Flanders in 1722. That Ken Russell is about to release his version (with Lucinda Rhodes-Flaherty in the title role) may do little to persuade us that the book is serious social satire. Which it is, according to Keiron Self, who has adapted the rambling epic, to do the work a great disservice. “It’s all in Moll’s head,” he explains during a break in rehearsals, “and while it’s a romp it’s one with a serious purpose. “And we wanted to be faithful to the book, to shows the gender politics in a story of a woman trying to survive in a man’s world.” Defoe himself was not beyond tittilating the expectations of his readership. His own extended strapline encourages much drooling, promising the tale of a woman who “during a life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest and died a Penitent.” It was, Defoe assured them, “Written from her own Memorandums”. Not surprising that modern versions have found it difficult to resist the temptation to show lots of flesh and dwell on Moll’s sexual exploits. Not for Mappa Mundi, however: “There’s not a hint of gratuitous nudity,” I am assured . Not even ungratuitous nudity ? Definitely not. What there will be are the familiar ingredients of any Mappa Mundi show: laughs, accessibility and historical accuracy. “We started by wanting to do Shakespeare in a way that today’s audience can understand,” says Lloyd Llewleyn-Jones, “but without dumbing-down.” With his knowledge of period costume and art, this Moll Flanders should be as startling as the company’s Shakespeares, where Holbein portraits and Elizabethan miniatures seemed to come to life; here, of course, it will be Hogarthian London – a fortuitous coincidence, with a major Hogarth exhibition and biography just out. So just think Brigadoon with similar breeches, no Irish-American accents, more laughs and a postmodernist feminist perspective - and enjoy this annual manifestation of a strange phenomenon. |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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