Lionboy, Complicite, Bristol Old Vic, review
Complicite's new show Lionboy has many virtues but sadly coarsens the subtlety of the original books, says Matt Trueman.
3 
Compelling narration: Adetomiwa Edun as lionboy Charlie Ashanti
Photo: Mark Douet
Photo: Mark Douet
3:45PM BST 31 May 2013
Comment
Complicite doesn’t make life easy for itself. For 30 years, this extraordinary company has tackled problem plays, slippery abstracts and unstageable novels with equal measures of care and flair. Who else would put number theory onstage or adapt The Master and Margarita — let alone pull either off so exquisitely?
The company’s first full-length children’s show is no less ambitious. Zizou Corder’s three Lionboy novels — Corder being Louisa Young and her daughter Isabel Adomakoh Young — match His Dark Materials for fantastical scope.
They follow Charlie Ashanti, a boy who can speak cat, as he attempts to track down his parents. They’ve been abducted by a multinational pharmaceutical company that’s after their asthma cure. Chased by their lackey Rafi, Charlie travels from London to Africa, joins a floating circus and frees its pride of lions, meets the King of Bulgaria on the Orient Express and teams up with a multilingual chameleon. Little wonder that Steven Spielberg bought the film rights — even if that blockbuster never came to be.
Complicite go the other way entirely, admirably committing to simple, straight-up storytelling. For the most part, Adetomiwa Edun — clean and charismatic as Charlie — narrates. His words do the work. Others play lizards and snarling dogs without props or puppetry. Ladders and stools form ships, big tops and trains. A bucket of wet rubber tubing becomes a catch of fresh eels. This is Blue Peter theatre that invites an audience to do it themselves. The real show will happen later, in parks and gardens, as children play Lionboy.
There are moments of glistening clarity. Femi Elufowoju Jr instils the lion-trainer Maccomo with a mystical, hypnotic intensity. Robert Gilbert is all spluttering menace as Rafi. A helium balloon floats to the auditorium’s ceiling, flying Charlie and his lions to Africa.
However, Annabel Arden’s production struggles with action sequences, too often resorting to unfocused running around. It can be uncharacteristically imprecise, even downright messy and confusing.
That will tighten in time. Marcelo Dos Santos’s adaptation won’t. He’s right to lose most of the plot — 1,000 pages won’t fit two hours of stage-time — but he also coarsens the books’ effortless sophistication. Corder lets the Corporacy’s villainy dawn on us, unpicks Rafi’s reasoning without excusing it and shows greater goods behind bad actions. Questions of ethics, environment and race are left complex.
Dos Santos strips all that out so that baddies chase goodies and happy-ever-afters reign. Pity.
Until June 1 then touring to Liverpool, Oxford, Warwick, Leeds, Cardiff and London. Tour details: complicite.org. Tickets 0117 987 7877; bristololdvic.org.uk
Follow Telegraph Theatre on Twitter
However, Annabel Arden’s production struggles with action sequences, too often resorting to unfocused running around. It can be uncharacteristically imprecise, even downright messy and confusing.
That will tighten in time. Marcelo Dos Santos’s adaptation won’t. He’s right to lose most of the plot — 1,000 pages won’t fit two hours of stage-time — but he also coarsens the books’ effortless sophistication. Corder lets the Corporacy’s villainy dawn on us, unpicks Rafi’s reasoning without excusing it and shows greater goods behind bad actions. Questions of ethics, environment and race are left complex.
Dos Santos strips all that out so that baddies chase goodies and happy-ever-afters reign. Pity.
Until June 1 then touring to Liverpool, Oxford, Warwick, Leeds, Cardiff and London. Tour details: complicite.org. Tickets 0117 987 7877; bristololdvic.org.uk
Follow Telegraph Theatre on Twitter
