Hansel and Gretel

While Hansel is kind-natured but a bit dim, Gretel is impish and creative. She delights in building elaborate contraptions, machines for the feeding of chickens and the catching of mice, and the assembly of her inventions on stage is one of the chief pleasures of Mike Shepherd’s production.

The first half takes a good long while to set up events: the lack of food and the utter desperation of the family’s plight are repeatedly hammered home. The pace picks up considerably in the second half with the arrival of Carl Grosse’s cannibalistic witch, in floral housedress and incongruous wig; his scenes contain the biggest gasps and laughs of the production, including a Halloween-like return from the dead. Children and adults should both find much to enjoy in his performance but there’s also something rather startling and potentially upsetting about the moment during which Hansel and Gretel realise the implications of all the tiny shoes and discarded teddy bears strewn around the witch’s gingerbread lair.

Visually it’s all rather muted; the set and costumes are a muddy palette of greys and browns – with the exception of the lurid red of the witch’s dress - and there’s a refreshing lack of sentimentality about cute animals and life in the country: bunnies and chickens are all fodder for the pot.

The performances are nicely pitched, particularly Joanna Holden as tomboyish Gretel and, of course, Grosse’s entertainingly over the top witch (he also plays their amiable woodcutter father). Though this isn’t Kneehigh at their best, a number of the company’s trademark elements are in place. The set resembles a skeletal jungle gym - the cast are constantly clambering on it - and Stu Barker and Ian Ross’s music is ably incorporated into the story (and, in a nice touch, the musicians also wear lederhosen). It just never quite achieves the magic or abandon of the best children’s theatre; it remains stubbornly earthbound, uneasily balanced between the grimly real and the gleefully fantastic.

share Tweet