Orpheus, Battersea Arts Centre

Little Bulb Theatre’s enchanting reworking of the Orpheus myth returns to the Grand Hall at Battersea Arts Centre and if anything it’s even more magical on second viewing.

It’s a delicious thing, this show. Frankly, given the amazing space they’ve been given to play in and the proven appeal of many of the ingredients they’ve chosen to play with, it would be a surprise if it were otherwise. But that’s not to diminish Littlle Bulb’s invention and skill. Much like in a Wes Anderson film there are boxes within boxes, frames within frames, to their handling of the narrative. The story of Orpheus is told in the style of 1930s Parisian cabaret, with the Great Hall bedecked with red velvet and an array of tables in front of the stage behind which sit more conventional raked seating. The lovers are portrayed by legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt and an Édith Piaf-alike chanteuse Yvette Pépin as played by Little Bulb’s Dominic Conway and Eugenie Pastor. While Conway’s Orpheus remains mute, a calm, smiling presence, his guitar speaking for him, the angular Pastor purrs and smoulders as Piaf/Pepin/Eurydice, rolling her words around, revelling in the undulations of her accent.

Much of the storytelling takes the form of a series of mime sequences and tableaux performed against a backdrop of Debussy and silent movie style-captions. The cast don bunny ears and buck teeth to play woodland creatures or drape and cape themselves in white to play the denizens of the underworld. The dancing is intentionally heavy-footed, and there’s an air of polished amateurishness to the whole enterprise which is mostly pitched at just the right level to render it endearing rather than overly arch. The musicianship as ever is exemplary, but then that’s something of a given with these guys.

Alexander Scott’s production has some truly dazzling moments, particularly in the second half. The song ‘La Chanson de Perséphone’ performed by Tom Penn in male falsetto reminiscent of Anthony and the Johnsons is genuinely haunting, the deployment of the Grand Hall’s mighty organ remains an incredible, reverberative treat, and the climactic sequence – Orpheus and Eurydice’s last desperate dash towards the light – has the audience holding their breath.

While the staging on the whole feels slightly tighter than it did first time around, there are some issues with the lengthy ‘jazz’ interval. While the audience are encouraged to come and go as they wish while the band plays on, few did, and the resulting drag threatens to, if not quite break, than at least dent the production’s spell. This isn’t Little Bulb’s most ambitious show – it doesn’t have the delicacy or the heart-knotting quality of Crocosmia or the divisive alien energy of Squally Showers - it’s a romantic response to an incredible space, a confection, albeit an exquisite one – but taken as an experience in itself, as a night of music and magic and fizz and copious, warm-hearted charm, it’s vastly entertaining and intensely happy-making.

Reviewed for Exeunt

Interview: Little Bulb

The creators of Orpheus at the BAC - as well as Operation Greenfield and the gorgeous Crocosmia - on music, myth, the ensemble as family, and what it's like to live on site at the Arts Centre while developing work.

Read the full interview on Exeunt.

Edinburgh: Operation Greenfield at Zoo Roxy

One of the more pleasing activities at last year’s festival was watching Little Bulb, then resident at the Forest Fringe, create and shape their endearingly raucous musical, Sporadical. With its cardboard props, embracive energy and fable-like quality, it was an endearing piece, well suited to the space.

The company’s latest offering, Operation Greenfield is, comparatively at least, a tighter affair that has more in common with their delightful debut piece, Crocosmia. While that show explored what it was to be a child suddenly faced with great loss and contained some memorable Battenberg puppetry, their new show is bigger in scope and the characters older, teenagers.

Set in Stokley, a quiet middle England village at some point in the mid-1990s, it follows a quartet of Christian teenagers as they prepare for their local talent show. Their chosen song is based on the story of the Annunciation, with lyrics supplied by the only Catholic member of the group.

The level of invention has not dipped and, as with Sporadical, the piece is studded with songs, including a strange and potent sequence when the cast wear matching Carmen Miranda masks. With a collection of props including several stepladders, a pair of fluffy angel wings and a large cardboard Elvis, the cast manage to evoke all manner of adolescent awkwardness and longing. Their attention to detail is lovely: the little glances, the shifting allegiances, the first stuttering flutter of friendship, the worry of not quite fitting in.

This is a more honed production than Sporadical, more precise in execution. But there’s also a sense that the company don’t always know where to stop, where to draw the line and leave things be. By the time their last show had reached BAC, their continual tweaks and additions had actually begun to subtract from the considerable original charm of the piece and here again there is a sense of a company adding layer upon layer upon layer, overworking things. Though it contains moments that are truly delightful it also feels overlong at ninety minutes in length. Their whimsical, eye-wide approach is refreshing in smaller doses but here they overplay their hand and some of the magic is lost.

Reviewed for musicOMH

Crocosmia at BAC

I really would not have predicted that one of the most beguiling productions I would see this year would feature someone spitting a large amount of half-chewed Battenburg cake into a carrier bag.

Or, for that matter, that it would feature adult actors playing children, something that can be incredibly tiresome when done poorly, but Little Bulb's Shamira Turner, Clare Beresford and Dom Conway invest their performances with such conviction, such care and affection, that all worries in this area fade in the first few minutes.

They play Sophia, Finley and Freya Brackenberg; Sophia and Finley are ten year old twins, Freya is age seven and three quarters. Their parents, April and Geoffrey (whom the cast take turns playing), are an affectionate, slightly nerdy couple and their lives are clearly comfortable and contented, their world rooted somewhere in the 1970s.

In its first half, the show takes us through various Christmases, breakfast squabbles (the bartering of Rice Krispies for Coco Pops) and morning rituals. It presents us with the siblings’ musical efforts and shows them dancing with abandon to Cyndi Lauper. Every scene is filled with believable, beautifully observed details; the characters’ interactions and even the way they stand and move are utterly convincing.

And then this idyllic bubble is popped. Their parents die and the children are shunted around, first to an orphanage, and then to a new family who, while they seem kind and grounded, are a world away from the children’s ditzy, doting parents. Various toys are used to convey the confusion of the time after their parents’ deaths; plastic elephants and pencil cases become crude puppets, standing in for prospective foster couples. The family they eventually go to are represented by a running shoe and a perfume atomiser. Music also plays an important role in this inventive show, with the children playing their parent’s eclectic records, and at one point, singing a song by Sufjan Stevens.

The production is an incredibly delicate thing: the premise suggests an excess of sentimentality, but it never quite crosses that line, it never overbalances. Instead it proves to be both moving and ridiculously uplifting. In one beautiful scene, the children enact one of their favourite memories of their parents using Battenburg cakes as stand-ins; eventually they give in to their sweet teeth and gorge themselves on their pink and yellow parental substitutes. It’s a moment that’s both upsetting and playful and manages to push its audience (well, me certainly) near to tears.

The show ends on a note of uplift, as the emotive charge of earlier scenes is off-set by the warmth and colour of Freya’s eighth birthday party, which the audience are invited to assist in. The stage is filled with balloons and streamers and a sense of hope. Memories can keep the past alive in their minds, but we are left feeling that the future may not be all that grim. The last thing we see is a light shining over them, a gentle, guiding glow.

Reviewed for musicOMH.

During the party scene, everyone was invited to blow up balloons, something I am utterly rubbish at. My efforts are always sad and shriveled things, as was the case here - it was a pretty pathetic effort.

I suspect this was the last show I’ll squeeze in before Christmas and I couldn’t have hoped for a nicer way to wrap up my theatre-going year.