Pinocchio - Matthew Hart with Geppetto - Luke Haydon

Will Kemp as Stromboli

ROH2 - Pinocchio - Linbury - Dec 2005
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all images © John Ross

Pinocchio Opens on Friday - more details here:
http://www.ballet.co.uk/dcforum/news/2996.html

Thoughts, views and reviews in this thread please...

From childhood all I can remember of Pinocchio is his lying and his nose getting longer. It's etched in my memory and always came to mind whenever I felt like telling a porky pie(*): "Should I risk it, or will my nose give me away!". I don't remember anything else of the story and Will Tuckett's new production came as a massive and rather pleasant surprise.

As Geppetto, Pinocchio's father might put it, 'Pinocchio is most wonder and brilliantissimo excersion'. It's not a dance show, more a musical where its Italian roots often ring through in vague and daft English - think Manuel and Fawlty Towers. But the plot is also breathtaking in its scope: how could I not remember the storm and shipwreck, the meeting in the belly of a shark, the evil puppeteer Stromboli's glue factory, his sly assistants, the Fox and the Cat and his eventual stabbing to death by the hero? Dark in places it may be, but it's all topped off with a happy ending masterminded by a Blue Fairy who always seems to scooter on (literally) when things have got particularly grim.

The designers have done a great job - the costumes are full of rich and inventive detail, all with a stylised 19th century theatrical look. The sets are also 19th century in their working - they rely on physically being manhandled to achieve their big and wonderous effects - but they work well. It's all the opposite of cgi films and slick cleverness, though I have to say that Pinocchio's growing nose is rather brilliant and very much 21st century. This is earthy traditional theatre with the show actually starting with the dance actors out in the audience and we are included us at other times too (don't worry, nothing embarrassing).

The music is jaunty and simple, courtesy of a 6-piece orchestra performing on stage, with much of it led by an accordion or clarinet. Charmingly unsophisticated, as is the singing of much of the cast. Sometimes however we couldn't always make out Phil Porter's words/lyrics and in a couple of places the plot seemed slow - the odd adjustment and tweak will happen I'm sure.

ROH2 has a terrific bunch of freelance dancers associated with it and it was good to see so many 'old friends' on stage - Matthew Hart, Luke Heydon, Cathy Marston, Charlotte Broom, Tom Sapsford to name but a few. Hart does a wonderful job of Pinocchio and his mechanical movement and simple unfathoming mind, but my favourite has to be Will Kemp as Stromboli - a man literally bursting from his filthy clothes and with single minded evil determination that sees him bounce back with more skulduggery no matter how often he is thwarted. Broom and Sapsford as his assistants, the Fox and Cat, also ham it up well and move wonderfully.

A goodly Christmassy extravaganzitude for tiddly ponks of all agietypes I think.

* For foreign readers -this is cockney rhyming slang: porky pie = lie

Edit: fixed a typo or two... BM

In view of the shortage of seats, I think I may have to stand, and would appreciate any feedback from anyone about the relative merits of standing near the back or closer to the stage? I usually like the latter, but when I went to the Hans Andersen thing I definitely missed out from being too close to it.

Once again Will Tuckett takes us on a magical journey to another time, another world.
It’s a vaguely Victorian place with a strong Italian flavour, yet these are just part of the captivating whole.

From the start the audience are engaged by interacting with the singers as they enter the auditorium. Geppetto appears alongside Row A to introduce us to his story, brought about by his deep desire to have a son. Luke Heydon has been tempted back to the Linbury stage from his new career as a landscape gardener for this peach of a role. The little wooden puppet, played by the irresistible Matthew Hart, bursts forth from an ingeniously designed tree trunk at the touch of Geppetto’s axe, his limbs apparently able to hinge in both directions, his mischievous yet innocent nature conveyed eloquently through speech as well as movement. His guide, the beautiful Blue Fairy was danced by Cathy Marston, an ethereal vision in a blue frock with matching wig and scooter!

But it is Stromboli, the wicked puppeteer, who steals the show and has all the best lines and songs. Will Kemp, back in the by now obligatory moustache ( think Ratty and Soldiers Tale) bounces around with an evil leer, brandishing his whacking stick and thumping all who cross his path, so beware! His side kicks are the mangy Cat (Tom Sapsford) and the sexy Fox ( Charlotte Broom) who tempt and pursue Pinocchio away from his home and his father.

Of course good prevails and dreams come true in the end, but what a marvellous adventure is had on the way. The imaginative sets, designed by the Quay Brothers are kept simple but highly effective, for example a huge silken sheet patterned with waves and foam for the sea, and a giant ‘Chinese dragon’ style Whale which swallows up first Geppetto then Pinocchio.

It’s a real treat from start to finish, highly recommended to all. The promotional material stated suitable for over 8’s, but there was nothing very scary and plenty of 5-6 year olds who were thoroughly enjoying themselves and did not want to give their toys back to Stromboli!

I’ll be going again to see the second cast on Monday and taking my children to one of the workshops, so hope to report back on these later .

Mandy Kent

The town people are amazed that there’s a puppet dancing with no strings. Stromboli wastes no time and pays Pinocchio cash so he will join his puppet show but Pinocchio says NO and leaves with Stromboli’s money. Fox (Charlotte Broom/Clemmie Sveaas) and Cat (Tom Sapsford/Alex Cowie) speak about the “Fields Of Miracles” and how it’s magical and if you bury coins there you’ll find a zillion riches. Stupidly Pinocchio falls for it and searches for the spot even though he should be going to school. But sneaky Fox and Cat dress up and follow Pinocchio and rob him. Pinocchio is sad as now he can’t find Geppetto until suddenly the magical Blue Fairy appears and sees Pinocchio is very sad

So she magic’s a special blue bird to take Pinocchio to Geppetto. As Pinocchio was looking for Geppetto, Geppetto was looking for Pinocchio. Geppetto thinks he’s in the ocean, so he takes a boat and sets out for sea but there’s a storm. Meanwhile Pinocchio arrives with the magic bird and finds Geppettos empty boat and thinks he’s as dead as a doornail!

Act two

Pinocchio is very sad. The magical fairy tells him real boys stand up when they think all is lost, real boys held their heads up high and are brave. Pinocchio starts to walk away but before he goes the fairy asks him some questions. The fairy asks him “Did you go to school?” “Did you go to a puppet show?” “Did you go off with a fox and a cat?” Pinocchio answered all in lies and somehow his nose got longer. “Now I will make your nose shorter if you promise not to tell lies and go to school?” “I promise”.
When Pinocchio got to school he had a teacher called Professor Winklebeam (Andy Morton/ Sani Muliaumaseali’i) who was teaching them brain boggling facts. But Pinocchio and his friends are twitchy. Lampwick, (Chris Akrill/Lee Boggess/Benny Maslov) tells them all about The Land Of Toys! They jump in to Stromboli’s cart and set of for the Land of Toys. The boys play with bouncy balls. But Stromboli says lets be real men and gives them alcohol and cigars and makes them play cards. Then Fox does a rude dance and suddenly the boys are turning into donkeys but worse than that it’s not the Land of Toys but the Glue Factory and Stromboli’s going to put the boys in the grinder. Then Pinocchio bursts Stromboli’s fat belly with a sharpened finger and he runs away. Pinocchio runs away to the beach and into the sea and he’s eaten by a shark. Inside the shark Pinocchio finds Geppetto. Geppetto asks “Do you want fish tail soup because I’m making fish tail soup?”
“Yes please” but before Geppetto could make the soup the shark sneezed and they fall into the ocean and are separated in the water. Finally they land on shore and Pinocchio sees Geppetto on the shore “dead” .Pinocchio cries in the corner when the Blue Fairy comes and makes Geppetto awaken and says to him “as you’re a kind man and always will be I am going to make your wish come true. Pinocchio has learnt many lessons and loves you like a real boy so I now present not a puppet but the real boy Pinocchio!” “Thank you, Blue Fairy for giving me a son!”

My comments about the show
I think the show was brilliant especially the end of Act 1 because I like the way the sea crashes on people!
I will see the cast with Mathew Hart soon to see if it’s different to the one I saw with Chris Akrill. My favourite characters would have to be Geppetto and the magical blue fairy. The show I saw with Chris Akrill was excellent so I gave it a 9/10. I didn’t give it 10/10 because Stromboli wasn’t talking clearly (I know he’s meant to be Italian but he’s a bit over the top)!
By Leora Kent

I too had trouble understanding Stromboli and I didn't at all like the way he beat people up. Did you think it was funny enough? I spoke to one very small person (too young to have been there really) and she seemed to have liked the fox's bushy tail, but that was about it!

I like the fox and her bushy tail too.I think Stromboli hitting
people was showing his horrible character just so you knew him better and hated him more.I think it was really funny when they wouldn't let him bow at the end.I liked the way glitter fell down in to the audience.I also liked the way Geppetto hits his bottom with his axe.I think it was excellent and hopefully everyone enjoyed it

Leora Kent

We were 'coached' by staff from the ROH2 ballet and opera departments ...all on first name terms...so thank you Jane, Liz , Paul et al.....

We all took part in a vocal and physical warm up and then it was down to business being School Kids, Fox, Cat,Stromboli, Blue Fairy, Pinocchio and Geppetto. Our routine went so well I thought they could have used us as extra's on stage in the afternoon ( dream on!)Both adults and kids had great fun.

The performance this afternoon was very slick and I'm still laughing
at Pinocchio( Matthew Hart) and Stromboli( Will Kemp)and friends...though it's quite a dark piece at times and today some younger tots were disturbed by the Land of Toys scene which has very loud noises and where the children transform into donkeys. So the age 8 + advice should perhaps be adhered to ?

Anyway, we had a magical time!

Wasn't there talk about it being filmed for TV? If so, I hope put it on a terrestrial channel...

'>On 8 January, also on BBC4 at 7.20pm, from the Linbury, Will Tuckett’ all-singing, all-dancing Pinocchio will be broadcast; a must for all the family.<'

So there's still something to look forward to....

Half the fun of going to the theatre is the appreciative dissection which happens afterwards but sometimes this innocent pleasure can lead to a disgruntled desire for a wholesale rewrite. This was where I ended after Pinocchio, which prompted all sorts of ruminations about the nature of children's theatre, the importance of story-telling, the place of audience participation and so on.

Carlo Lorenzini's picaresque tale, published in 1881, is organised in 36 chapters, each presenting a self-contained episode from the life of the wooden rascal. Tuckett's writer, Phil Porter, has inevitably condensed and altered the original to fit it into an hour and a half but in doing so has blurred the story line. Porter opts to fudge the birth of Pinocchio who is plucked fully formed out of a tree, rather than coming to life under the carpenter's hands, which could have made a good coup de théâtre. He has also invented unnecessary and not altogether funny set pieces such as the scene where the baddy Stromboli corrupts all the children (played by adults) with booze, gambling and a rather unconvincing strip-tease. At the end of this the children, for no apparent reason, are changed into donkeys (in the book it's because they won't study and ignorant children are donkeys) which are then to be processed into glue. One assumes they are saved, but I wasn't quite sure.

Pinocchio at first seems an odd tale to modern eyes and ears. The puppet boy has all the appropriate characteristics of young males: laziness, mendacity and ignorance (though he is can also be loving and kind). The message seems to be that if you don't behave properly you can't be a proper boy, so all the undesirable features have to be knocked out of him by attempting to make him resist the tempters and villains that he encounters. There's a hectoring quality to this insistence on going to school, behaving well, having backbone and not telling lies. This slightly dubious moral philosophy is presented by Porter without irony (as in the original). On second thought it sits well with our government's overweening concern with antisocial behaviour in young people. The moral voice in Pinocchio is that of the Blue Fairy but could be that of Mr Blair. What would one not have given to have seen a Prime Minister lookalike dressed in blue tutu riding a scooter, rather than the conventional fairy as played by Cathy Marston. An opportunity missed.

But that would then make it a pantomime and this production is not billed as such. It is a 'family show', which I suppose means no bad language or sex - though of course there is no embargo on violence. It's child-friendly credentials are boosted by six post-show discussions and five family workshops but how many children will really find it comprehensible and fully enjoyable? We are not going to know, but it was very significant that the greatest animation in the audience was when beach balls were thrown from the stage into the auditorium and batted around for a while and, at the end, when glitter was rained down on the spectators. Other efforts at getting audience participation were half-hearted. The show starts with most of the cast being summoned out of the auditorium, but this idea is not followed up; later there was an attempt to get the audience to sing along or at least clap to the music. This is a show that cries out for panto type audience involvement ('LOOK BEHIND YOU...' and so on), but no. The best way to involve the audience is to get them to laugh but, although the script is clever and witty (where audible), much of the wit is adult, little is laugh-inducing.

Why do grown-ups think that children think that foreign accents are funny? Used for comic effect in the theatre they are alienating rather than endearing. Why has so much energy and ingenuity gone into inventing a lingua franca for Stromboli when it is scarcely comprehensible by adults, let alone children? (Comprehension is not improved by over-amplification - all the performers are miked even though no audience member in the Linbury is more than spitting distance from the stage.)

The staging has good effects, especially a silken stormy sea with model boat to show Geppetto's ill-fated journey and shipwreck when in search of Pinocchio. There are also scenes that redefine bathos, notably a Land Of Toys which consists of six beach balls, suggesting that the production budget had overrun. Something that cannot be faulted however is the application, skill and enthusiasm of the cast who make the most of sometimes thin material. I reserve my criticism for the progenitors.

I wish I could feel more enthusiasm for this piece from someone who has given much enjoyment in the past and surely will again.