|
|
|
|
|
Mavis Sparkle ( Eve Robertson) and Spike Mavis Sparkle
Birmingham Rep Door
**** IN an age of video games, social media,
conversations in 140 ch Story telling is as old as mankind. In many
societies, such as Native Americans or Australian aborigines, a peoples’
entire history, legends, culture and place on earth are all wrapped up
in stories passed on from generation to generation since the dawn of
language. And carrying on that tradition is Eve Robertson
as Mavis Sparkle a cleaner with a trolley full of mops, brooms, a
wayward mop bucket and just a little dusting of magic. The scene is set with the audience being duly
dusted and Mavis nonchalantly performing a couple of magic tricks; a bit
of paper miraculously reforming as a newspaper page, a discarded snack
wrapper bending on command. Not quite Dynamo, but enough in the close
confines of The Door to bring a look of wonder to the faces of the
youngsters in the audience. Mavis drops more magic into the show, sometimes
enough to impress children but tongue in cheek for the adults, which is
all part of the fun. The problem is Mavis’s job is finishing so she
needs to find a new one and along the way we meet Spike, a very
realistic rescued hedgehog, and hear of her parents, a magician and a
dancer who travelled the country in a campervan called Connie. Mavis gives us a taste of their magic show. When
variety died in theatres the pair got ordinary jobs as cleaners but they
made one last magical journey in Connie to see the stars and the aurora
borealis, the northern lights, all in a simple light show in a model
theatre on Mavis’s trolley Simple, low tech, not a computer screen in sight,
and remarkably effective. It is a show full of gentle charm with lots of
quirky moments and a trolley full of hidden compartments making it fun
and interesting to watch, but adults are not really the best critics of
children’s shows. How good a show really is can be measured quite simply
by the level of fidgeting, talking and even crying – kids can make the
Glasgow Empire seem sedate!
And Mavis had the kids eating out of her hand,
wide eyed with little gasps of surprise at the simple tricks and full of
wonder at a simple lightshow. My youngest grandson, at 16 months, is
perhaps a little young for a coherent view, although it did hold his
attention and he did try to join in a couple of times, but his brother,
five, with 30 shows under his belt already (the benefit of a theatre
reviewing granddad) is a seasoned theatregoer and declared it a hit.
Praise indeed. The age guide is four plus and for younger
children, and to be honest, their parents as well, the show is a real
delight which at 45 minutes or so is not too long to test young
attention spans. It keeps alive an age old tradition helped by a little
magic and stars. Written by director Gilly Baskeyfield and Dot Wood, M6
Theatre's Mavis Sparkle runs to 29-10-16 Roger Clarke 27-10-16 Mavis Sparkle is at Warwick Arts Centre Coventry, Sunday 13 November
|
|
|
|
.jpg)
aracter and acting and plot becoming secondary to
computer graphics in movies, what a delight to find some good old
fashioned storytelling.