Awful Auntie
By David Walliams
Adapted and Directed by Neal Foster
Set & costume design by Jaqueline Trousdale
Birmingham Stage Company
The Pavilion Theatre, Bournemouth
Thursday 24thJuly 2018, 14.00
CAST
Georgina Leonidas – Stella Saxby
Tomothy Speyer – Aunt Alberta
Ashley Cousins – Soot
Richard James – Gibbon, the butler
Rebecca Bellekom – Wagner (owl)
It’s always the actors I feel sorry for. I once had lunch on set with an actor on one of our video series. Ex-RADA. I asked him if I might have seen any of his stage work. I had indeed. Smaug The dragon in The Hobbit for several months, one of the worst pieces of children’s theatre I had ever seen. Until today.
David Walliams is a brand. A heavily promoted children’s book brand. The Wilbur Smith or James Patterson of children’s literature. As an actor / comedian? I never liked Little Britain. I thought Big School totally brilliant in contrast. I have seen him on stage as Bottom in Michael Grandage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Awful Auntie is on a LONG tour.
So we went to see Awful Auntie because our seven year old granddaughter is devoted to Gangsta Grannie and that’s not touring currently. She is reading Awful Auntie. She loves the books. Her soon-to-be five brother came too.
There is a concept here. That is a children’s PLAY rather than ENTERTAINMENT. So we have a wordy script, much narrative. But no songs. No audience interaction. No dance. No acrobatics. No hilarious activity. The lead, Stella, never breaks the fourth wall to invite even momentary audience sympathy. Strictly proscenium stuff with a solid fourth wall.
Aunt Agatha (Timothy Speyer) confronts Stella (Georgina Leonidas)
Trouble is, Bournemouth Pavilion. I know it well. I’ve worked there. 1458 seats. Really big for a theatre. However, the last time I saw it used for straight theatre was early 70s, and I think it was Arthur Lowe in An Inspector Calls. I recall seeing Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance there with twelve in the audience. We all moved to the front row then. What it does well is concerts, pantomime, musicals, and way back in the 1960s, summer variety. A play? No.
The travelling set was well within the huge Pavilion stage. Add a boarded over orchestra pit. The front row was way below the stage and a good cricket pitch length back. The hall, so good with musicals, is cavernous for spoken voice. Up in the circle, the mic’d up actors were an echoey screech, especially Awful Auntie herself whose high-pitched screech was largely incomprehensible. That’s why she (he) got barely a titter throughout. Nobody heard a word she was screeching. It’s unfair to judge it on the Pavilion, it might leap up in estimation in a more intimate setting. Here it was a screeching contest. Given amplification, I would have expected them to check sound quality upstairs. They can’t have done.
The owl and Auntie (Timothy Speyer)
Then we come to the story. Oh, dear. Roald Dahl was the greatest influence and that’s hugely emphasized by using Quentin Blake as an illustrator. But let’s add a Harry Potter Hogwarts set complete with owl. Stella and the ghost Soot are basically Cinderella and Buttons. The escape from the locked room with piece of paper and key is Enid Blyton’s Mystery of The Secret Room, the most overt of continual Enid Blyton lifts (It’s aso used in Jurassic World). Soot, the ghostly chimney sweep is from The Water Babies. The funny butler is direct from One Man Two Guv’nors. The car chase is Toad in Wind in The Willows.The story is the most derivative potpourri I have seen. We spent an unhappy half hour seeking ANY originality in “Brand Walliams” storyline. I love pastiche and reference, but this is merely complete lack of originality.
The motorized set with four columns was carefully constructed and thought out, though pure Hogwarts. Puppetry with the owl looked naff. A very brief sequence had Stella and Awful Auntie operating puppets of themselves, far too short for the vital importance of the puppet death of Auntie to work later, The frozen lake was clever.
Stella (Georgia Leonidas) and Soot (Ashley Cousins) in car
What do they think children’s theatre is? I know our kids might have been relieved at the absence of enforced interaction, but it seems a given for the genre, as does music and dance and action. They eschewed all these. It’s wordy. Far too much narrative. No doubt someone somewhere was saying, “It’s a real play not a pantomime.” A pity. The audience was incredibly quiet this afternoon. They sat on their hands. Only the farting and peeing jokes got the odd titter (and were VERY Roald Dahl). If you can’t make under-tens roar with laughter at fart jokes, you are truly incompetent.
Harsh? OK, Cast of five. It cost £71.45 for two seniors, a 7 year old and a 4 year old. I think that was “a family ticket.” £3.50 for ice cream. £5 for a programme (Chichester and Bath are £3.50, AND they are worth reading). It’s an expensive afternoon. Cheap compared to London theatre, I agree. But it’s not comparable in quality. The theatre size takes a large piece of the blame – it’s simply too big in stage and auditorium. The action is too distant from the audience. Far better to have booked Poole Lighthouse five miles away and actually filled it.
You charge the money for derivative, unoriginal stuff, you take the flak. It did not go down well. To me a failure.
- (one star)
Sounds dire in every respect. I’m glad I don’t have small children in my life who might want to see this.
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