Unshackled from The Globe, Emma Rice lets rip with her company Wise Children’s second production and her trademark firecracker vigour and inventiveness again bewitch but – and this is why she really triumphs – it’s all done with passion and huge heart.
Smashing together six of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers 1940’s/50’s novels into one musical narrative set in a boarding school about the power of female relationships and loyalty, Rice’s adaptation chucks in all her visual inventive, layered staging, creating a beach, a dorm, a cliff, a railway carriage and employing her inspired box of tricks – animation, projection, stunts, dance…
It’s not exactly a pastiche but is often a tongue-in cheek, affectionate homage to Blyton’s sealed-off public school world of midnight high jinks, female bonding and learning what it means to be a good friend and a decent human being.
Rice has also assembled a highly diverse cast (Emma Rice productions must have actors thronging in waiting lines to audition) – actors of colour, a non-binary actor and an actor with dwarfism (Francesca Mills, pumping out a high energy performance) are uniformly brilliant and multi-task surprisingly throughout – acting, singing, dancing, doing acrobatics, using beds as trampolines, doing headstands, playing the harp… These are gold standard performances that would sit easily in a huge West End theatre and watching the cast bounce energetically around the stage (& even giving the audience an energetic interval mini performance) and singing with full throated abandon, the glee they evince is infectious.
Rice has said the Malory Towers series was ‘radical to its bones’ and Rice movingly highlights abuses of power and bullying in this rarefied environment as well as the traumatic after-effect of war on families and pupils. The action is framed by present day school pupils and ends with the proto-Girl Power message that it is not enough to be a strong character, you must also be kind and use your talents to do good in the world, and the stentorian tones of Sheila Hancock as the headmistress, given commanding life in silhouette projection form, gives wise life advice to her pupils.
Although the songs occasionally cause the narrative to drag a little, the pace is picked up in the second half which sees the characters perform a daring rescue, stage a play and do the Can-Can. It’s an energetic, often breath-taking, visual delight.
The family audience loved it. This production is another entrancing triumph for Rice, who is firing on all cylinders now she has full autonomy to make all her own decisions. Girl Power indeed.
Reviewer - Tracy Ryan
on - 25/9/19
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