Theatre / Children's Theatre
Review: Snow Globe, The Lantern
The Lantern at the Colston Hall has been transformed into a flat-floor performance space for this Kid Carpet / Bristol Old Vic co-production, with a bright set that suggests an invisible giant glass dome, surrounded by a horseshoe of audience on three sides.
The stage-side inner circle of floor space – made to look like wrapped Christmas presents – is seething with small children who are giggling, poking each other, sucking sweeties, writhing and waving madly at their grown-ups, most of whom are seated at least a couple of rows away in an obligingly hands-off way.
Kid Carpet bounces onto the stage like a popstar, sporting a golden cardboard kipper tie and his trademark trainers, and explains that he’s hired a “super massive” snow globe from Gary Barlow, and that it might snow, but he’s not sure when.
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He has a useful bit of kit with him in the form of a robotic talking fridge (shades of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey mixed with Siri from your iPhone), whose job it is to keep things on track, sort of.
Clownesque Susie Donkin – better known as Gloria’s hapless assistant in Spitz & Co’s hit show Gloriator – appears in long blonde wig as a weather forecaster to tell us of the chances of snow.
What follows is part rock concert with a funky mash-up of nursery rhymes, part end-of-the-pier entertainment – and wholly anarchic, as Donkin quickly morphs from pop goddess Kylie Minogue, to Brummie cleaner Claire, footballer Ronaldo and arctic explorer Shackleton, like a demented Butlins Redcoat on uppers, spangled by the twirl of a disco ball.
Any attempt at linear storytelling and pedagogic messaging is shunned by Donkin and Carpet in favour of fast-moving comedic tableaux, silly larks and daft songs that wind the children up into a frenzy. They love it, because the grasshopper brains of the creators work in exactly the same way as theirs do – the brain cells are just older, not wiser.
There’s even a Mexican wave (and a Portuguese one too, in honour of Ronaldo), a surreal game of tennis, a scatological reworking of Peter Pan and lots of pitching in from the children.
Yes, but DOES IT SNOW, you ask. If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you. Go and see for yourself – and take a small child as a human shield.
Snow Globe continues at The Lantern until January 14 2018. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/snow-globe.html
All photos by Paul Blakemore
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