Old Vic, LondonRazzle-dazzle showbiz twins bewitch and delight in an inventive, smart and saucy productionWise Children is Angela Carter’s rambunctious last novel about illegitimacy, incest and Shakespearean illusion. It is also the name of Emma Rice’s new theatre company, which launches with this adaptation. Carter would surely have approved of such doubleness and reinvention; her work is filled with twins and revisionist retellings of old stories.Dora and Nora – the central twins of Carter’s book – are Brixton-born septuagenarians, looking back on their lives as showgirls in the tawdry music halls of 1930s London. Here, they are represented by puppets, as their youngest incarnations, and by three couples: cartwheeling girls in pigtails (Omari Douglas and Mirabelle Gremaud), Amazonian showgirls with Louise Brooks bobs (Melissa James and Bettrys Jones), and the 75-year-old dual storytellers (Etta Murfitt and Gareth Snook), narrating their life stories with the cockney bonhomie of old-school entertainers. Continue reading…
Via: Wise Children review – Emma Rice's spectacular Angela Carter carnival
Categories: English News