Theatre review
Love & Madness
Mirror Magic Market Tales
by Chantal Schaul
Directed by Neil Sheppeck
Riverside Studios
9 December 2008 – 4 January 2009
y CouzenA review by Colette Gunn-Graffy for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Just outside the theatre where Mirror Magic Market Tales is to be performed, an usher takes the audience aside for a bit of last minute instruction. At first, all is fine, if slightly non-traditional: told they are about to enter a ‘market square, the audience is invited to examine and (in some cases) sample the vendors’ wares before the show starts. Then comes the disturbing proclamation: there is no proper seating. Instead, the audience is welcome to sit, or stand, anywhere they like – on the few scattered chairs, the floor, even the small raised stage in the centre of the room – and, what’s more, they are encouraged to move about and change places during the actual performance. Smiling and nodding, the audience members try to hide their unease, but it’s clear as they enter the theatre, they are unused to being given so much license.
As promised, they step not into an auditorium, but a rather mystical market world, conveyed largely through Kelly Hogan’s beautifully detailed set design. Small stalls selling wool, jam, metalwork, gingerbread and glass dot the periphery of the performance space, each of them uniquely crafted to convey not only the type of goods sold, but also something of the character of the vendor standing beside it. Indeed, the fifteen minutes before the show begins offer perhaps the most entertaining moments of the entire evening, as the actors (marvellously in character) attempt to entice and haggle with the members of the audience milling about their stalls.
As one might expect, the plot of Mirror Magic Market Tales is fantastical. Doomed to seventy-seven years of bad luck for breaking magical mirrors, Perry, a German butcher, and Moll, an elderly woman from Lancashire, discover that their sentences can be lifted if they assist Otto, the magic Mirror of Consequence in his quest to assist three unsuccessful young market vendors find happiness. Setting up stalls in the same square as the hapless young gentlemen, Perry goes incognito as a jam maker, and Moll transforms herself into the beautiful Lily, a golden-haired vision in a white dress and pink heels who mans the gingerbread cart. Though instantly smitten with Lily, the young men, Lionel, Yes and Will each suffer a handicap that they fear will stand in the way of winning her love: Lionel is bald, the consequence of an ancient curse on his village; Yes can only say the word, ‘Yes,’ the consequence of angering his father Thor, the thunder god; Will cannot look at mirrors, the consequence of a strange disorder caused by post-traumatic stress. In three separate encounters with Otto, each of the young men is invited to gaze in the Mirror of Consequence, and there beholds the happy ending he could find with Lily, if only he acts on his desires. Eventually, of course, the fact that there are three men and only one Lily – who, in fact, does not even exist – becomes a problem in need of resolution.
Though many of the ideas contained in the plot are delightfully imaginative and often quite comical – for instance, that Lionel’s village is protected by a militia of bald men, paranoid that an invasion of full-maned males could drive their women wild – the story seems to labour under too many ideas, and falters under too much explaining. That Perry and Moll’s bad luck stems from the fact that the mirrors they broke contained magical beings called ‘reflecticles’ (Otto, we are told, is such a being) may be important to know – and it is true it paves the way for some humorous confusion with the word ‘testicle’ later in the play – but the concept seems to be developed and discussed ad nauseum. Similarly, delving into the back stories as well as the future fantasies of Lionel, Yes and Will offers some funny and intriguing moments, but this has more to do with the prowess of the actors than the strength of the script, which often feels quite loose and meandering. As secondary characters appear and disappear, and further tangential plot events are introduced (there is talk, for instance, of Perry being arrested for selling store-bought jam), it becomes all too-easy to lose track of what is going on in the story, and exactly how Moll’s masquerading as three different versions of Lily (as each young man has a different fantasy about her) resolves any of it.
The play also suffers from a confusion of tone, which in some moments is rather unsettling, particularly the moment when Nick Earnshaw (who also plays Perry), as a manic, giggling politician discusses how to fill a pipe bomb with nails. Although billed as a ‘dark comedy’, the play’s subject matter belongs largely to the realm of a Christmas panto, which means that its few forays into matters of terrorism and prostitution (the latter really only suggested) are uncomfortable rather than humourous.
Despite these shortcomings, the actors, in general, are to be commended. As Lionel, Yes and Will, Craig Tonks, Richard Holt and Jack Roth are the highlight of the show. The energy, physicality and humour with which they inhabited their characters did much to revive a script that was lagging structurally; the best moments in the play were those in which all three were onstage together, interacting with each other. Unfortunately, as much of the story is narrated by Otto, those moments are few and far between.
The night I attended the show, the audience, despite the usher’s encouragement, never did move about the space during the performance. With a few exceptions, once they had located somewhere relatively out of the way places to sit, people tended to stay there, whether out of exhaustion or out of uncertainty as to when and where to move, it was difficult to tell. It’s also possible the burden of having to continually relocate oneself both in the story and in the room was simply too much to be asked. Only able to focus on one at a time, I personally opted for the story, not wanting the miss the few truly hilarious moments that every so often came along.
9 – 14, 16—23, 27 – 30 December / 2 – 4 January @ 7:30 pm
13, 14, 20, 21, 24, 28, 29, 30 December / 3, 4 January @ 1:00 pm
Tickets £14 / £10 concessions / £5 children (under 16) / £32.50 family ticket of 4 (max. 2 adults)
Box Office: 020 8237 1111
www.riversidestudios.co.uk
Riverside Studios
Crisp Road, Hammersmith, London W6 9RL
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