The Shoemaker and the Elves a children’s musical by Peter Pinne and Don Battye. Directed by Nina Stevenson at The Vikings Club Auditorium, Erindale, until Friday January 19 at 11am.
When I was six, my first theatrical role was as an elf in The Elves and the Shoemaker which my teacher adapted from the original Grimm Brothers’ story.
The shoemaker was poor simply because he was a shoemaker. When he had only enough leather left for one pair, the hard-working selfless elves made many more shoes overnight than he could, helping him through a bad patch. He and his wife wanted to thank them. Watching one night they saw the elves had no clothes, so they made clothes for the elves who were happy to receive them. From then on the shoemaker made ends meet, though still poor as shoemakers always were.
Pinne and Battye’s sentimental version pits the shoemaker Mr Buckle (Peter Fock) against the richest woman in town, Silver Sequin (Jennie Tonzing), also a shoemaker. The elves (Meg Hobson, Tom Hobson, Charly Madden, Christopher Murphy, Lauren O’Flaherty, Grace Saunders and Paige Vaughan) depend on a benevolent whistle-blowing elf Slipper (Diana Tulip) to direct their magic. Mr Buckle has no wife, but a daughter Carolinda (Maviel Tanevska) who is in love with the nice Jingles (Cameron Boxall) who works for Silver Sequin because he needs a job.
Silver Sequin glories in being nasty and has a nasty offsider called Nasty Neville (Bart Black). Shoe purchasers are Lord Loppy (Scheyla Ahmadi Pour) and Dame Squeaky (Mariana Davila). The elves’ magic shoes make people happy, even Silver Sequin in the end, and win the Shoemaker’s Award from the King (Hugh Stevenson) for Mr Buckle.
Though the production is quite well done (in an attractive set by Brian Sudding and supported by excellent musicians), this 1974 Australian “fun” version just doesn’t have the magic, or quite the same ethical message, as the original simple story I still remember after 60 years. The first half is too slow (mainly the fault of the script, and at least one family went home at interval when I saw it), but the second succeeds in gathering some momentum for a cheerful ending, though still struggling for impact in such a large auditorium.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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