Reviewed by Frank McKone
Creative Team
Director: Liesel Badorrek
Designer: Isla Shaw
Lighting Director: Jasmine Rizk
Sound Designer: Ross Johnston
Video Producer: Mic Gruchy
Cast
Zoe: Jade Fuda
Burt: Nicholas Hiatt
Albie: Mason Maenzanise
Tina/Sheila: Billie Palin
Dad/Mr Grave: Christopher Tomkinson
Understudies: Connor Banks Griffith, Hannah Wood
Watching Ratburger as
I am in my second childhood, I feel more frightened than when reading
any of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales in my first. I’m sure Zoe’s
step-mother in Ratburger is closely related to both Gretel’s mother and the wicked witch in the Hansel and Gretel story.
Reading
the Grimm’s dark stories was a calm and thoughtful experience for me in
my first childhood – as I hope it is for eight-year olds reading
Walliams today – but this presentation of Ratburger on stage is loud audially and visually, turning the essential dark story into a kind of black comic satire.
This
is what frightens me. The set and video design is absolutely
fascinating, intriguing to watch, drawing in even the toddlers in the
audience. The choreography is fast, theatrical and often funny. The
amplified voices range from loud to screaming, and cannot be ignored.
The images are designed to create curiosity, especially about how the
shadow effects are done – including when Zoe’s step-mother and Burt the
Burgerman cause her father’s final divorce as they race each other off
and into his grinding machine.
The puppetry is exquisite. The dialogue is full of ‘woke’ phrases. And then we adults understand the satire.
The
young will only see the horror of nasty grown-up untrustworthy woman
and conniving even criminal man making burgers from rats, as they break
up Zoe’s family again; and Zoe’s incompetent but loving man – the father
she loves – coming good and helping save her favourite rat from the
grinder.
If they are old enough, they may see the extreme
presentation as funny. In the performance I saw there were not many
laughs. Middling youngsters laughed at obvious gags (words and in
actions); some adults laughed at the ‘woke’ dialogue; little youngsters
mainly watched with little apparent reaction; some fiddled with the
cushions they were given to lift them high enough to see the stage.
As
an example of responsible theatre for children, it concerns me that
those too young to cotton on to the satire will remember family
breakdown and how unloving adult women behave; and will pick up on the
sentimental message of the girl saving the rat despite everything, (and
learning to like the girl next door, but only after she has apologised).
In
my role as a grown up, I see the play for what it is – a satire of the
tragedy of life where divorce is increasingly common and there are
plenty of rats who make burgers from rats.
But I think Master’s
play is more for adult education than for children. I haven’t had the
opportunity to read the book by David Walliams, but hope children who
read it may respond as I did to the Grimm Brothers’ fairy stories.
Copyright: Frank McKone, Canberra
No comments:
Post a Comment