TIL New Year 2018

16
A scene from Pinocchio, centre Joe Idris-Roberts.
PINOCCHIO National Theatre
Let’s face it, Pinocchio, a wooden boy
made from a magical tree by gentle
Geppetto, an elderly puppet maker who
always longed for a child, arrives on his
work bench as a fully formed, semiobnoxious
teenager.
He is hungry and eats all the food in
the house leaving none for Geppetto. He
promises to spend the day with his father,
but spies other kids through the window
and runs off to play with them instead. He
hears about school and wishes to go, so
Geppetto sells his only winter coat to buy
him an exercise book – but Pinocchio
drops the book in his haste to run away
and join a travelling theatre.
No one told Geppetto parenthood
would be this hard. But in the classic
tale – retold for this beautifully eerie and
organic setting by Dennis Kelly – there
is a Blue Fairy who cautions Pinocchio
about the trials of being the ‘real’ boy he
wants so badly to become.
The story is a fairytale of course and
rich with multiple meanings. This
production features magnificent, gigantic
puppets carried aloft onstage above the
main players, so the Fairy, Geppetto,
Jiminy Cricket and so on are all
mechanical as well as human. It is a
wondrous spectacle. Some roles have
been interestingly modernised since the
Disney version. Jiminy (Audrey Brisson)
is a girl and quite an annoying one at
that – obsessed with cleanliness and a
lot like an older sister to Pinocchio. He
doesn’t like her at all.
David Langham’s villainous and
slightly camp Fox is spot-on. Pinocchio
asks him repeatedly what the thing is
that unites all real human beings. Fox
kinks his tail, swishes his long orange
coat and comes up with answers such as
a longing for fame or desire for pleasure
or money or all three, all the while
selling him to other villains.
Pinocchio’s misadventures become
more gripping as the evening goes on.
Bob Crowley’s sets and costumes are
gorgeous to look at without being
sparkly. They consist of a great many
natural wooden objects, even including
the skeletal representation of the giant
whale, in whose great stomach
Pinocchio is finally reunited with his
shipwrecked father. Then there is the tiny
floating flame which represents the Fairy
and the low-tech broom handle which
grows as Pinocchio’s nose.
The simple things are best. And in the
end, Pinocchio learns that love is what
unites real people. His triumph is to turn
into a real boy made of flesh and blood
who both feels pain, but enjoys a hug
from his Dad. Bravo! Sue Webster
BELLEVILLE
Donmar
Being Americans in Paris proves a
tougher task than anticipated for recently
married couple Abby and Zack in Amy
Herzog’s play which premiered in 2011.
At first, all seems more or less fine in
the casually bohemian flat (realistically
designed by Tom Scutt) they’ve rented in
trendy Belleville so that medic Zack
could take up a research position
working on preventing kids from
contracting AIDS. Abby has given up a
career as an actress back in the States to
come with him, filling her time giving
yoga lessons and waiting obsessively for
transatlantic phone calls from her father
to update her on the progress of her
sister’s pregnancy.
It doesn’t take long, though, before,
bit by bit, the shaky foundations on
which their relationship is based are
revealed – Abby’s trying to wean herself
off the meds she’s been taking since the
death of her mother, Zack is far too fond
of smoking weed, regularly sharing a
bong (or preferably two) with their
Senegalese landlord Alioune (Malachi
Kirby). And Zack hasn’t paid the rent
James Norton and Imogen Poots are
completely credible as the ex-pat couple.
She’s fragile, anxious; he’s both insecure
and controlling. At times it feels almost
intrusive watching their sometimes
tender, sometimes damaging exchanges
in Michael Longhurst’s interval-free
production.
There’s more than a touch of the
melodramatic in the writing, but Herzog
keeps shifting the balance and the
compelling performances maintain the
tension in what proves to be a very
watchable psychological thriller.
Louise Kingsley
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