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      ‘Wolf Play’ Review: What Keeps a Family From Falling to Pieces?

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      Hansol Jung’s new play looks at the broken adoption of a little boy who is plucked from South Korea and moved to one American home, then shunted to another.Sand-colored with beady black eyes and a throaty howl, the character at the center of “Wolf Play” is and is not what he seems. Wolf, who serves as the narrator, is a simple but expressive puppet made of wood, cardboard and papier-mâché in this probing and playful exploration of family by Hansol Jung.Loose-limbed and rising just a few feet off the floor of the tiny stage at Soho Rep, Wolf represents a 6-year-old boy who undergoes one wrenching separation after another. The American couple who adopt him from South Korea decide they can’t handle him and the demands of their newborn too, so they find another family for the boy by advertising on a Yahoo message board.An abandonment so awful and absurd calls for fierce survival instincts. Perhaps that goes to explain why the boy isn’t a boy at all, but a wolf who longs for a pack, as Mitchell Winter, the adult actor maneuvering the puppet, insists.Wolves get a bad rap, Winter tells the audience, which is seated on either side of the stage. The lone ones may snatch red hoods, but they don’t make mischief for its own sake. It’s a natural response for familial creatures left to fend for themselves, crouched defensively much of the time. “But stories need conflict,” he says, “and, boy, do wolves know how to fight.”“Wolf Play,” which opened on Monday, proposes that “the truth is a wobbly thing.” In Jung’s freely associative landscape, that means allowing a puppet to be a boy, a boy to be a wolf and a wolf to be an actor in a knit cap with pointy ears (costumes are by Enver Chakartash).The play directed by Dustin Wills and presented with Ma-Yi Theatre Company, portrays a traumatic situation, but with an antic disposition and a goofy heart. How would a boy respond to these wounds but with growls, howls and swinging paws? It seems too much for one being to process, yet there’s a lightness here that chases away the shadows.Wolf, a volatile and reactive jumble of joints, is handed off by Peter (Aubie Merrylees), the father who adopted him, to Robin (Nicole Villamil) and her wife, Ash (Esco Jouléy). Robin is eager to become a mother, while Ash is a boxer prepping to go pro and reluctant to take on a distraction like a child. Ryan (Brandon Mendez Homer), who is Robin’s brother and Ash’s coach, seems supportive of the adoption — until Wolf’s position in the pack seems to threaten his own.If the play has a love plot, it’s between Wolf and Ash, a prototypical fighter with a tough exterior and soft center. Ash is nonbinary, and is the first person to whom the boy speaks out loud. “Wolf Play” suggests there’s an animality connecting us that transcends gendered social scripts; kinship and love are wild and don’t play by any rules. Peter, however, objects to the absence of a conventional father in the boy’s new home.Performances from the ensemble are uniformly strong and suited to the production’s intimate scale. Winter’s double feat as an energetic narrator and a sensitive puppeteer is so nimble that the boy often appears to be a separate living thing, endearing one moment, a terror the next (Amanda Villalobos is the puppet designer).But casting a wolf as a protagonist becomes a tricky gesture when expressing inner feelings is limited to encyclopedic facts about the species. (“Wolves are cautious, the masters of survival.” “Wolves suck at being alone.”) Though Jung’s narrator seems to promise access to the story’s emotional core, there is only so much that taxonomy can illuminate.Wills’s production has the exuberant restlessness of a crayon drawing tacked to the fridge, chaotic but underlaid with a careful internal logic. A door on wheels, mismatched chairs and blue balloons (from Wolf’s “welcome home” party) are roving fixtures of You-Shin Chen’s set. Barbara Samuels’s lighting makes prodigious use of tone and darkness, while the sound design by Kate Marvin inspires the grating quality of a child’s crying.If stories need conflicts, as Wolf suggests, the climactic ones here — a bout in the ring, the inevitable custody battle — ultimately feel manufactured and somewhat beside the point. There’s an unruly quality to Jung’s idea of what theater can be, jagged and untethered, coy and dreamlike. It’s thrilling to see that potential unleashed on the vagaries of love, even if it’s not so easily tamed.Wolf PlayThrough March 20 at Soho Rep, Manhattan; sohorep.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      Review: A ‘Merchant of Venice’ That Doubles Down on Pain

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      John Douglas Thompson stars in Arin Arbus’s caustic and assertive new production of the Shakespeare play.More than 30 years ago, John Douglas Thompson, then a successful salesman at a Fortune 500 company, saw a play in New Haven, Conn. When it was over, he offered up a prayer: “Please, God, make me an actor. Teach me how to do that, and make this possible for me.”Thompson told me this five years ago, on the floor of a Broadway lobby after finishing a performance of August Wilson’s “Jitney.” And I remembered it last week, watching him as Shylock in Arin Arbus’s caustic, provocative production of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” at Theater for a New Audience.That prayer has been answered.Since 2009, when he played Othello — also for Arbus, also at Theater for a New Audience — audiences have recognized Thompson as an outstanding classical actor, perhaps the greatest Shakespeare interpreter in contemporary America theater. There are actors of greater plasticity, better grace, lusher voice. But Thompson, a virtuoso of psychological insight and emotional specificity, makes each centuries-old line sound like it has occurred to him in the moment. In his distinctive sandpaper rasp, he takes what’s timeless and transmutes it to the present. To watch him work is to feel fluttery, lightheaded. Blessed, maybe.“The Merchant of Venice” is a fairy tale with a corrosive center, a chocolate filled with battery acid. Its plot joins two folk tales, three love stories and a nerve-splintering trial scene that puts “Perry Mason” to shame. It concerns a melancholy Christian merchant, Antonio (Alfredo Narciso), who borrows 3,000 ducats from a Jewish usurer, Shylock (Thompson), to fund his friend Bassanio (Sanjit De Silva) — a close friendship that Arbus renders as explicitly romantic. Shylock forgoes interest in favor of an unusual condition: If Antonio forfeits, Shylock will extract a pound of flesh from his body.From left, Thompson, Maurice Jones, Yonatan Gebeyehu, Nate Miller, Alfredo Narciso and Varín Ayala in the production, which emphasizes the awfulness of everyone in Venice, not Shylock alone.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDespite his relationship with Antonio, Bassanio is wooing Portia (a flexible and elegant Isabel Arraiza). To confound her suitors, her father has set them a challenge. They have to choose among three caskets: one gold, one silver, one lead. If a suitor chooses correctly, he will find Portia’s portrait. Otherwise, he has to leave, with the promise that he will never marry. The plots combine in that harrowing courtroom scene, where Portia gives her “quality of mercy” speech.Over the past century, scholars have debated whether “Merchant” should be staged at all, particularly after the play was deployed in Germany in the 1940s as Nazi propaganda. Every responsible production has to contend with its uneasy legacy.Arbus’s solution is to emphasize the awfulness of everyone in Venice, not Shylock alone. Mercy? Look elsewhere. On Riccardo Hernandez’s set, a doge’s palace given a Brutalist remodel, and under Marcus Doshi’s grim lights, the characters demean and betray one another. Even the virtuous Portia displays casual racism and less-casual hypocrisy. No one else behaves any better. Emily Rebholz’s costumes — athleisure, Vans, a hoodie with “Brooklyn” printed on it — confirm this atmosphere of treachery as neither long ago nor far away.Casting Thompson complicates the prejudices at work in the play, superimposing Blackness on Shylock’s Jewishness. Black Jews of course exist, but despite the interpolation of some lines from a Yom Kippur prayer at the play’s end, it is this Shylock’s Blackness and not his Jewishness that Arbus’s production emphasizes. “By casting a Black man as Shylock in America in 2021, one becomes painfully aware of the connections between Shakespeare’s 16th-century Venice and our world now,” she said in a news release.This pays certain dividends, giving some lines particular resonance, as when Shylock, in his speech to the Venetian court, says:You have among you many a purchased slave,Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,You use in abject and in slavish partsBecause you bought them. Shall I say to youLet them be free! Marry them to your heirs!Why sweat they under burdens? Let their bedsBe made as soft as yours?In laying bare Antonio’s prejudices during the first act, Thompson mockingly assumes the cringing tones of a racist caricature, a barbed and devastating choice that shows his anguished self-awareness. He knows how the others see him and how they want him to behave. He refuses. But in exacting revenge on those who perceive him as less than fully human, he loses his own humanity, which is his tragedy.And yet, this doubling feels like displacement — diminishment, perhaps — especially as it sidesteps the thorny questions of the play’s own attitudes toward Jews. Threats against American Jews have risen precipitously in recent years, as has online harassment. The hostage situation at a Texas synagogue last month was a sobering reminder of hatred with a long history. None of this necessarily makes Arbus’s focus on Blackness wrong. (And who would deny Thompson any role he wanted?) But anti-Blackness and antisemitism aren’t identical. And both continue. Which is to say: Wasn’t this painful enough? Weren’t we aware already?The Merchant of VeniceThrough March 6 at Theater for a New Audience, Brooklyn; tfana.org. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. More

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      ‘Space Dogs’ Review: To Boldly Go Where No Dog Has Gone Before

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      … Some never to return. This new Cold War musical about the Soviet-American space race pays tribute to the pups who preceded the cosmonauts.We’re in 1957, the height of the Cold War. The Soviets and Americans are racing to space, and the Soviets have pulled ahead by launching the first human-made object into the Earth’s orbit. The next goal on the horizon: sending a man into space. But before that, there was Laika, a stray dog from Moscow who was the sole living occupant of the spacecraft Sputnik 2, which orbited the Earth. Sputnik fell from space eventually, but Laika did not survive the trip.Now Laika has been resurrected as the subject of a vapid new musical, “Space Dogs,” an MCC Theater production that opened on Sunday and that stars its creators, Nick Blaemire and Van Hughes.Directed by Ellie Heyman, “Space Dogs” recounts the story of Laika, the best known of the dogs that Soviet scientists trained for space travel. In this retelling, a scientist known by the code name Chief Designer led that initiative.Parts of the show are told from Laika’s perspective, from doggie diary entries and songs (Laika is played by a plushie that is mostly handled and voiced by Blaemire). Other parts come from the perspective of the chief designer, played by Hughes. The rest of the scenes break the fourth wall, providing historical and political context. It’s informative, in a slipshod way, but also hopelessly cheesy, packed with dad jokes, puns, silly accents and even a doggie beauty contest. “Space Dogs” gives off the vibe of a B-grade educational children’s show — though one with the occasional vulgarity amid the bleak material.One oddly peppy song recounts how the chief designer, “driven by a void in the center of his chest,” to use a cliché from the show, was imprisoned in the gulag and tortured during the height of Stalin’s rule. And though no dogs were harmed in the making of this show, there are canine casualties and somber existential musings from the four-legged friends. Besides the Bowie-esque chorus and spoken word of “Fill the Void,” and the alternating soft acoustic chords and heavy strumming of “Blessed by Two Great Oceans,” most of the musical’s songs are pretty uniform stylistically and generically upbeat — bouncy yet forgettable numbers that contribute little to the story.“Space Dogs” also telegraphs Pixar-level heartbreak through mawkish tunes. “What if I die? What if I fall out of the sky?” Laika sings, and later croons from beyond the grave about her dashed hopes for a family and delicious steak. It’s emotionally manipulative, especially for tenderhearted animal-lovers in the audience. The show then must walk a difficult line between a celebration of Laika and her canine colleagues (“History was changed by dogs!” the two actors declare) and commentary on the ambitions of two countries on the brink of mutual annihilation.Laika the dog in the spotlight of the musical “Space Dogs,” an MCC Theater production.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHughes and Blaemire attack their material with such enthusiasm; their earnestness is palpable, even taking into account the corniness of the book and their imperfect vocals (the songs they wrote accommodate their range and abilities).The rest of the production appears poised to overshadow the two stars and their story. Wilson Chin’s scenic design is compact and cluttered, full of drawers and speakers of different shapes and sizes stacked together Tetris-style alongside Soviet and American flags. Amanda Villalobos offers some fabulous puppet and prop design that, unfortunately, isn’t prominently showcased until the last third of the show.The lighting design (Mary Ellen Stebbins) is the boldest, full of neons and strobes. Projections, green screens and live cameras all figure prominently as well, and though the celestial lights and scenery are dazzling, all of these elements together offer a glut of visual information that is often overwhelming.What would my own dog think of such a show, I wondered as I left the theater. I’m betting he’d prefer to keep his paws on the ground.Space DogsThrough March 13 at MCC Theater, Manhattan; mcctheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      Interview: We Consent to these questions

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      Director Paul Collins on bringing Consent to the stage at Questors Theatre

      Until recently, we weren’t aware of Questors Theatre (we apologise for that oversight on our part) but now it’s on our radar we are more than happy to see what amazing shows they are presenting us with. This community based theatre in Ealing are clearly not afraid to tackle the difficult subjects, as their next show, Consent, clearly proves. Nina Raine‘s play, first performed at the National Theatre, follows the two barristers on either side of the case and the turmoil of their lives away from the courtroom.

      We sat down with director, and former barrister himself, Paul Collins, to ask why this play appealed to him and whether being a former barrister is a help or hinderance to directing the play ahead of its opening night on 19 February.

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      What was it about Consent that made you want to bring it to Questor Theatre?

      This is a tautly written play raising issues about trust in personal relations and the contrasting demands of empathy and detachment, for lawyers and for us all. And it manages to be viciously funny from time to time, as well. 

      The play focuses on the two opposing barristers in a rape trial; as a former barrister were you able to bring personal experience to the play, and how realistic are the two based on your real-life experiences?

      The playwright, Nina Raine, acknowledged legal input and the legal side has an authentic ring. Some of the barristers’ chat is deliberately extreme for dramatic effect, but it’s not far off! But the real focus of the play is on the relationships between the characters.

      Did you ever need to stop yourself being too forensic and detailed in your approach to the legal moments of the play?

      No! There’s only one courtroom scene and we don’t attempt to set it realistically. I’ve used my personal experience to a limited extent, to help the actors, but the author has provided what’s really needed. The detailed work has been much more directed towards the ebb and flow of the characters’ emotional and sexual relationships.

      The play is only five years old, but in that time we’ve seen a lot of change, especially with the #MeToo movement and (hopefully) a changing attitude towards how we deal with sexual assaults. Has this affected your approach to the play at all?

      If the play were being written today I’m sure the author would think carefully about the implications of the binary approach to sexuality which it presents. But the central portrait of the law and its practitioners having a detached and sometimes callous attitude wouldn’t change. How can lawyers do their job without being detached? How can empathetic lawyers do their job objectively? These questions remain. And the audience may wish to think about fidelity, betrayal, disillusionment, revenge, and consolation.

      In 2021, only 1.6% of reported rapes lead to a suspect being charged. Does Consent try to give any reasons for such statistics.

      One word against another – in the absence of other evidence, prosecution is a lottery. The play demonstrates this clearly. Ways in which an alleged rape victim should be supported are highlighted in this play, but there’s no easy answer.

      What made you step away from the bar into directing? Was the attention to detail required as a barrister good training for directing?

      It was retirement from the circuit bench after 19 years (25 years at the bar previously) that gave me the time to direct. It’s stimulating, draws upon many different aspects of one’s abilities and highlights where they may be lacking! I love working in the the theatre with talented and dedicated people of all ages and backgrounds. You should ask the cast and stage team whether my background is a help, or a hindrance!

      What brought you to Questors Theatre, and what is it about the venue that should make people come and check it out?

      I’ve been an acting member of the Questors for over 40 years although for many years the demands of work prevented me from taking an active part in the life of the theatre. It’s a splendid place to have in a thriving, cosmopolitan community like Ealing. There’s much we can do to improve but we try to be a focus for young and old, wealthy and not, and for those of every race, colour, sexuality and for those with a disability. The Questors takes large numbers of young people under its wing for a wide range of classes. Anyone in West London who becomes involved, even just as an audience member, feels how important it is. Consent is the kind of play which can be raw, challenging and, to some, perhaps offensive in its language, but which doesn’t shrink from tackling real questions about human behaviour head on.

      Our thanks to Paul for giving up his time to chat to us about the play.

      Consent plays at Questors Theatre in Ealing between 19 and 26 February. Standard tickets are just £14, with concessions for members, under 16s and full time students. More information and bookings via the below link. More

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      #Interview: Asking that tricky question, How Disabled Are You?

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      Author: Everything Theatre

      in Features and Interviews, Podcasts, Runn Radio interview

      12 February 2022

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      Tommy, aka The Queer Historian, talks about his show, How DIsabled Are you?

      How Disabled Are You? explores the difficulties and prejudices faced by benefit claimants. It’s a topic rife for horror stories of what people have had to go through, so we thought a perfect subject for us to chat about with Tommy.

      Another show originally planned for Vault Festival, this interview was recorded prior to the festival cancellation. But that shouldn’t make it any less of a must-listen as we talk about the show, the difficulties Tommy has faced, and just why it probably isn’t a show for Daily Mail readers.

      The show currently doesn”t have any confirmed new dates, but we suggest following Tommy on Twitter here to keep up to date with new announcements. More

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      Richard Christiansen, Influential Chicago Theater Critic, Dies at 90

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      His reviews for The Chicago Tribune, and his encouragement of the drama crowd, helped make Chicago one of the country’s leading theater cities.In 1970, as Americans were preparing to mark the first Earth Day, Richard Christiansen, still relatively early in what became a storied career of writing about theater in Chicago, seized the moment to argue that the arts deserved just as much attention as the environment but were unlikely to receive it.“One can actually see the air becoming befouled through pollution,” he wrote in The Chicago Daily News, his employer at the time, “but it is much more difficult to tell when the spirit is withering for lack of nourishment.”Over the next three decades, at The News and then, from 1978 to 2002, at The Chicago Tribune, Mr. Christiansen nourished readers with his drama criticism. He helped make Chicago one of the most vibrant theater towns in the country, not only through his writing but also with the occasional behind-the-scenes nudge.He championed early work by David Mamet and other playwrights, boosted the careers of directors like Robert Falls and highlighted performances by countless actors who would go on to become national names, among them Gary Sinise, Amy Morton and Brian Dennehy. He shined his spotlight on the innovative early efforts of now venerable companies like Steppenwolf and now departed ones like the Famous Door Theater.He was so widely respected that when he retired in 2002, the League of Chicago Theaters Foundation turned its annual gala into “Showtime 2002! A Salute to Richard Christiansen” and filled the evening with scenes from some of his favorite plays.Mr. Christiansen died on Jan. 28 at a Chicago nursing home. He was 90. Sid Smith, a former colleague at The Tribune and his executor, confirmed the death.Mr. Christiansen was not just a big-house critic; from the 1960s on, Chicago was home to theater staged in converted bowling alleys and storefronts and assorted other so-called off-Loop spaces, and Mr. Christiansen eagerly sampled seemingly all of it.Last week, the producer Charles Grippo, in a letter to The Tribune, recalled the time in 1987 when he produced his first show, a revival of Mr. Mamet’s “The Woods,” in just such a space. Mr. Christiansen had called for a ticket, but on the appointed day a blizzard struck. Mr. Grippo decided to proceed with the performance anyway and was pleasantly surprised when Mr. Christiansen braved the storm and turned up at the theater. His enthusiastic review made the show a success.“Christiansen was always honest with his readers,” Mr. Grippo wrote, “but he was never mean. He truly wanted those of us in the Chicago theater community to flourish.”In a 2002 article in The Tribune reflecting on his career, Mr. Christiansen recalled some of those off-the-beaten-trail discoveries, including the night in 1987 when he made his way to “a ramshackle space underneath the L tracks” to see a production by a new company, Famous Door, which went on to considerable acclaim before folding in 2005.“In Chicago, at least,” he wrote, “you never know where the lightning is going to strike, where the talent is going to show itself.”Mr. Christiansen in 2002. Once, after being moved by a production, he wrote, “I had to pull my car over to the side of the street so that I could clear the tears from my eyes?” Afterward, a rave from him was known in Chicago’s theater world as a “pull over.”Charles Osgood/Chicago TribuneRichard Dean Christiansen was born on Aug. 1, 1931, in Berwyn, Ill., west of Chicago, to William and Louise (Dethlefs) Christiansen. He grew up in Oak Park, Ill. In his 2004 book, “A Theater of Our Own: A History and a Memoir of 1,001 Nights in Chicago,” the dedication reads, “For my parents, who went to church and to the theater and took me with them.”In a 2004 interview with The Tribune occasioned by publication of that book, he recalled that the first show he was permitted to attend was “Oklahoma!”“Before I was allowed to go, my mother had to make sure there were no dirty words in it,” he said. “I was still able to see it even though it had one ‘damn.’”He graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota in 1953 with an English degree and did a year of postgraduate work at Harvard University, “learning that I lacked a true scholarly bent,” as he summed up that experience. Then came two years in the Army and a trainee position at Time magazine in New York before he returned to Chicago in 1956 and took a job at the City News Bureau, a cooperative news agency that fed the area’s papers.Mr. Christiansen went to work for The News in 1957. He started on the night shift, but by the early 1960s he was writing more and more about the arts — books, television, music. And theater. He left The News in 1973 to edit a new magazine, The Chicagoan, but when it went out of business after 18 months he returned to The News. When that paper went under in 1978, he was picked up by The Tribune.As a critic, Mr. Christiansen was no cheerleader; if he thought a production was bad, he wasn’t shy about saying so. His opening sentence in a 1985 review of a drama called “White Biting Dog” at Remains Theater said simply, “‘White Biting Dog’ shouldn’t happen to a dog.”But if he liked a show, his words could help make the reputations of actors, directors and companies. An oft-cited case in point was his 1983 review of Jack Henry Abbott’s “In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison” at Wisdom Bridge Theater, a production directed by Mr. Falls and starring William L. Petersen, the actor now well known from the television series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.” Mr. Christiansen wrote of Mr. Petersen’s stage mannerisms and craftsmanship, then said this:“These qualities are admirable in acting, and can be accounted for, but how do I account for the fact that minutes after leaving the theater Thursday night, I had to pull my car over to the side of the street so that I could clear the tears from my eyes?”Afterward, the Chicago theater world was said to refer to a rave from Mr. Christiansen as “a pull over.”Some critics keep a distance from actors, directors and others they write about, but Mr. Christiansen, who leaves no immediate survivors, was known to talk shop with those in the theater world and offer career guidance.In the mid-1980s, for instance, he went to a showcase production of Shakespeare scenes staged by a young director and actress named Barbara Gaines, liked it and invited Ms. Gaines to lunch.“I didn’t even finish my chocolate mousse before he suggested — or rather, informed me — that my next project must be to direct a full-length Shakespeare play,” Ms. Gaines said by email. “And from that fateful day, Chicago Shakespeare Theater as we know it was born.” She is now artistic director of that well-regarded company.The playwright Jeffrey Sweet, who wrote an appreciation of Mr. Christiansen last week for the website American Theater, told of his own experience with the Christiansen guiding hand.“Without telling me he was going to,” he said by email, “he phoned Northwestern University Press and told an editor there, ‘Sweet’s written enough good stuff it’s time for you to publish an anthology.’ And they did. And he wrote the introduction.” More

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      On the Scene: ‘Music Man,’ a Big Broadway Bet 🎺

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      On the Scene: ‘Music Man,’ a Big Broadway Bet 🎺Matt Stevens🎭 Reporting from BroadwayThe Omicron variant has made this a tough winter for the theater. “The Music Man,” a big-budget, star-studded musical, opened Thursday hoping to provide Broadway with something of a booster shot in the arm. 
      Here’s what the night looked like → More

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      Interview: Prepare for a Surprise

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      Author Eileen Browne on bringing Handa’s Surprise to Little Angel Theatre

      Handa’s Surprise is a modern classic children’s book, named one of the best culturally diverse picture books in the UK. The story takes us to Kenya, following in Handa’s footsteps as she journeys to see her best friend Akeyo, in the next village. Handa is taking seven delicious fruits as a surprise – but seven different animals have seven very different ideas… could you resist the sweet-smelling guava? How about a ripe red mango or a tangy purple passion fruit?

      The story is now being transferred to the stage, so it was our delight to spend time with the book’s author, Eillen Browne, to find out why this story is still one children love, and just what to expect when it gits the stage.

      This stage production of Handa’s Surprise is based on a book that’s still a best seller nearly 30 years after its first publication. What is it about the tale that children love? 

      Well, the book is visually vibrant. The cover shows a girl carrying a luscious bowl of fruit and there’s a hint that something’s about to happen – an ostrich in the background is keenly looking on. But most of all, the words tell one story and the pictures tell another. Children can see what’s happening when Handa can’t.

      After all this time in the pandemic with its travel restrictions it’s fabulous to be immersed in the incredible colours and imagery of another country! Can you tell us a bit about Handa, and her life in Africa?

      Yes, it is lovely to be taken to other places during these restrictive times. The story is set somewhere very different to the places that most readers will be living. Handa is a made-up but well researched character. Two women from London’s Kenya Tourist office gave invaluable advice about hairstyles and  lifestyles of girls living in the countryside of South-West Kenya.

      The original picture book is beautifully illustrated. What are you looking forward to most about seeing them brought to life from page to stage? 

      It’s good to hear that you like the illustrations. The Little Angel’s production has captured the warmth and vibrancy of the pictures and given it extra dimensions with music and movement and an exciting variety of puppetry.

      What are the main themes raised in the story, and are they likely to open up conversations for the audience? 

      This is a story about friendship, a journey and the unexpected. It shows that when bad things happen, really good things can happen too and the characters, readers and audience all get a lovely surprise. As with the book, the onlookers will have lots to talk about.

      What other fun things are included in the production? 

      The interaction of the actors with their very young audience is wonderful.

      What do you hope your audiences will take from the show? 

      As well as ‘travelling’ to another place, hopefully the audience will leave feeling more cheerful than they did when they arrived.

      Is this production going to be touring elsewhere?

      Yes, Handa’s Surprise will be on at Little Angel Studios from 9 February – 16 April before heading out on tour in the Spring.

      Thanks to Eileen for taking the time to chat with us. Handa’s Surprise is on now at Little Angel Theatre, playing until 16 April. Further information and booking via the below link. More