Preview: Into The West, Factory Theatre

Tobacco Factory Theatres welcomes Bristol young people’s theatre aces Travelling Light as they reprise their multi-award-winning tale of two Traveller children on a wild ride across Ireland.

Beginning in the tower blocks on the outskirts of Dublin, where the duo live with their widowed father, Into The West tells the story of the magical white horse that appears in their lives, brought to them by their grandpa who still travels the land and follows the old ways. Its arrival sets in motion a series of comical, heart-breaking adventures which culminate in a wild ride across Ireland to escape from the police and their troubled past.

The story was adapted from Jim Sheridan’s screenplay for the 1992 film Into The West. Travelling Light’s 1995 adaptation enchanted audiences, gathered rave reviews and helped to build the company’s reputation for creating exceptional work. The company celebrate the production’s 20th anniversary by revisiting and remounting it for a new generation of audiences.

“Not just exceptional children’s theatre, it is complex, moving and vivid theatre that creates a complete imaginative world of its own,” praised Lyn Gardner in The Guardian. Ages 7+.

Here’s director Greg Banks to tell us more.

This is clearly a play that invites audiences – and performers – to use their imagination. What are the challenges and rewards of staging a play which involves the imagination as this does?
The script leaves a lot of room for creativity and imagination. At one point the script just says, ‘the actor becomes a ‘Western’, at another the actor is ‘the helicopter’, or the whole cast is the Atlantic Ocean. This allows the actors to be a crucial part of the creative process. It’s exciting, not knowing how the thing is going play out, how you are going to solve ‘problems’ like having a horse as the main character. One of the joyful things about the show is that over the years, we have received hundreds of letters from children in the audience, which contain pictures of the ‘White Horse’ – although there is never an actual horse on the stage.

How much does this production resemble, or differ from, the original 1990s production?
Essentially, it’s the same as the original. It has shifted in tiny ways as the new cast find their way through the script, but the original was very tightly choreographed around the set and music – so that in some ways the whole thing, from an actor’s perspective, is not unlike a dance. The cast is new apart from Craig Edwards who played one of the children in the earlier productions and is now playing Pa, the role he actually created in the very first production. What’s been exciting is discovering that the play still works for the audience 20 years on – we still cry, we still laugh, and we haven’t felt compelled to make many changes.

What, if anything, does the horse come to symbolise or represent?
I think you have to come and see the show and find out for yourself.

Is it genuinely, as director Sally Cookson suggests, a play with appeal to all ages? And if so, how does it achieve that?
The play absolutely appeals to all ages. It’s an adventure story, with a magnificent white horse at its centre. At the same time, it speaks about grief, loss, hardship – but it is never maudlin, never depressing. At the heart of the play is a joyous, tender relationship between a girl and her elder brother who looks after her, while their Pa is overcome with grief at the loss of his wife and his way of life. The adventure appeals to the child in all of us, while the ending still moves me to tears.

What do you hope to send audiences away thinking and feeling?
I think the play takes us on many different journeys, and different bits of that journey will resonate differently with each of us. It’s always hard to say what an audience will come away thinking and feeling, but after seeing this play many times over the years I like to think that an audience will come out with their hearts uplifted – both by the story itself and the telling of it. 

Into the West June 29-July 17, Tobacco Factory Theatres. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/into-the-west-2. Read our review here.

Pics: Camilla Adams