THEATRE REVIEW: The Night The Frost Fell - The Library Theatre, Oldham.

This morning I found myself at the bijou and wonderful performance space in Oldham Library, which is, now that The Grange Theatre is no more, Oldham's second professional theatre venue. Small, intimate, and ideal for small scale tours and one-man shows, this morning's musical from local company, Oldham Theatre Workshop, was made for a much bigger arena, and I found the confines of this theatre too limiting for it. That being said however, creative out-of-the-box thinking allowed a single, almost non-existent, composite set to be all the necessary varied locations from a small town, a creepy mountain cave, to a frozen lake, whilst large puppets were utlised either side in the entrances for the non-human creatures that populated these areas. Jack Frost scared the kids, whilst a big and beautiful polar bear was the highlight for them.

The story of this Christmas fable was written by Sarah Nelson with music and lyrics by James Atherton; the pair behind OTW's last two (at least) children's Christmas shows at the library. The townsfolk are living in a perpetual Autumn. One of them had stolen the crystal from the Guardian Of The Mountain which regulates the seasonal change, and then hidden it. In spite the Guardian had then cast a spell to stop time itself, and make every day the last day of Autumn with no weather change. Two girls go on a somewhat inadvertent journey through ice and snow to find the crystal and bring it back to her and return the world to its seasonal norms. There is a nice sublininal message in here about the beauty and necessity of nature and the natural cycles of the earth, and man's wanton destruction and 'possession' of it.

The play-with-music is performed by 4 adult actors/actresses aided and abetted by three young girls from the OTW Workshop. Hope Yolanda plays our heroine Bobbi, whilst the other three multi-role throughout, with Farhaan Shah spending most of the time either playing the violin or manipulating puppets. 

It took the young audience this morning (the show's target audience of 7/8 year olds) quite a while before they started to understand the story and enthuse over the happenings on stage. The start is gentle and the mood and pace don't really lift until two-thirds of the way into the 40-minute first half. The harmony singing is delightful, but the songs are not the kind of song our youngsters are likely to get excited about, and the multi-rolling of the actors/actresses also made it more confusing for them. There was little or no laughter from start to finish, but then again, the story was not one that lent itself to too much comedy and so, again, they tended to lose focus somewhat. The Guardian's first entrance at the side of the stage brought them out of their reveries, and this was done excellently.

On entering the auditorium, there was a distinct perfume / aroma in the air, along with haze and some natty blue lighting. This was excellent and enticing, however, all of this disappeared as soon as the play started never to return. The lighting capacity at the theatre is basic, but what they had was used well throughout. Although, I do feel the wrong hue of fairy-light were used. They were supposed to indicate ice and so a steel would have worked much better than the warm straws they did use, which, since they were talking about fires at the same time, seemed to me to indicate this and not the ice from Jack Frost.

The vocal levels this morning were a little mixed. Shah sadly had very little dialogue, which was a shame, since his was the loudest and clearest of the four voices, whilst I was at times struggling to hear what our protagonist Yolanda was saying. Naomi Bynon and Ella Lovelady performing all the other characters between them with degrees of success. 

The director (uncredited) built up a solid production with some subtle dynamics, however this particular reviewer found it very difficult to believe that anyone on stage was actually cold. The dialogue kept mentioning how cold it was and how it was getting forever colder, and yet the cast stayed in the same costumes with bare legs and hands throughout, and not for one second did I ever believe it was actually cold on stage. Shame. Moreover, the performance - not the story - was more suited to a slightly older age group. There was no audience interaction, in fact, the cast had no opprotunity of even acknowledging the audience at all, and so, with that fourth wall firmly in place, the children easily lost interest. The story was a little difficult for them to follow completely, and the undulating dynamics of the show gave them no real emotional challenge either. 

A curious mixture of 'Frozen', 'The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe', and 'Hansel And Gretel' all rolled into one, with a deal of unique invention too. It's a very nice story, and the four perform it well, with lovely vocal harmonies; but it failed to truly engage and inspire.

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 6.12.22