At NYTW |
| National Youth Theatre of Wales- Whispers in the Woods , Sherman Theatre Cardiff , September 17, 2004 |
Greg Cullen may be renowned as the creator of some of the best theatre for young people in Wales over the past twenty years, but there’s always been a dark side to his writing.Alongside his inspirational work for Mid-Powys Young People’s Theatre and currently his artistic directorship of the National Youth Theatre of Wales there’s a probing into taboo areas like incest and childhood sexuality – dangerous territory for any artist but particularly fraught when you’re stimulating older teenagers into exploring their identities as well as their theatre skills. Not that Whispers in the Woods, written and directed by Cullen, is obviously provocative. It is on the surface a gloriously extravagant ragbag of fairy-tale, myth, romance and Hollywood fantasy about a changeling girl, her protective father and her lover. But, as we expect from Cullen, we should never take anything at face value: this non-stop, relentless and often very funny pantomimic romp is all about subverting the world of childhood fiction. Here we have the Ugly Sisters deciding that Cinders should go to the ball because she needs to get out more and Rumplestiltskin changing into a very nice man called Brian. But we also have the battle between Good (represented by colourful hippy-hatted smiley happy people) and Evil (sexy, fetish-geared deviants) and, at the centre, every parent’s nightmare of a beautiful and innocent young daughter falling for the local wolf (literally). The black side of the Brothers Grimm emerges to get mixed up in the world of Angela Carter, with more than a nod to the romantic tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. The problems of sexual awareness, of parental control, of the loss of innocence may raise their heads but, it must be said, never tackled directly. Instead we are caught up in a mad mix that’s a cross between a postmodernist feast and a hallucogenic fantasy…but one that is, nevertheless, often disconcertingly disturbing. I guess for many this annual National Youth Theatre of Wales production is all about the sixty 16-21 year-olds who come together for the summer to make a piece of theatre – and certainly it looked like they all enjoyed themselves, and such enjoyment is of course infectious. More, of course, it’s about their experience of theatre-making and Cullen is the latest of a series of directors who would challenge these young people and initiate them into the world of imagination and metaphor as well as develop their skills. It would, however, shirk the issue to pretend that this production was particularly challenging for participants or audiences But I shall be very surprised if many of the young talent here – and not just the remarkable leading trio of Kimberley Nixon, Tom Cullen and Gruffudd Glyn ab Aled – are not within a short time familiar faces in Welsh professional theatre. The play itself (originally written for Mid-Powys Youth Theatre and benefiting here from Welsh dialogue from Ian Staples) can get swamped by the production and some of its edge is blunted, I feel, by the sheer exuberance - not the case with Cullen’s NYTW debut show last year, Frida and Diego, which was still sharp and powerful. The darker side is not developed and the idea of having a series of stories embedded in the overall plot gets very confusing; oddly, coming from a writer whose strength was always his sense of political conviction, there seems to be no real content to this piece. But the Sherman audience – even if many were justifiably proud parents and supporters – seemed to have no such reservations and gave the show a standing ovation. |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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