Tron Theatre, Glasgow
4 stars
4 stars
It’s a mad world for the runaway teenager in
Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson’s novel for young people, adapted here by Tron
artistic director Andy Arnold for Katie Posner’s dark, fast-moving
co-production with York’s Pilot Theatre. The play follows the perils of
Leonora, or Leo, the orphaned Anglo-Chinese daughter of musicians, who goes on
the run from her creepy Uncle John in search of her Chinese grand-parents in
Glasgow.
Once on the streets, Leo falls in with the city’s
fractured flotsam and jetsam who’ve fallen outside society’s loop, finding
sanctuary with Gayle Runciman’s Mary, who survives by dancing to Johnny Cash
records at full blast. With paper boy and would-be gumshoe Finlay as a
sidekick, Leo’s search is as much for herself as anything else.
With five actors clambering across Gem Greaves’
impressionistic set, and pulsed along by RJ McConnell’s burbling sound design,
Arnold and Posner capture the full urgency of Leo’s plight from the get-go.
Yet, for all its big-city grit, there’s something of an old-school film noir in
Donaldson’s yarn, even as it squares up to some very uneasy truths. In this
respect, with Stephen Clyde’s Uncle John in hot pursuit and a million Chinese restaurants
holding potential clues, it becomes part detective story, part thriller, and
part quest for cultural and personal identity.
Jessica Henwick’s Leo becomes a Dickensian pivot on
which the play hangs, with Grant McDonald’s Finlay becoming her urchin-like
foil. By the end, Leo, Finlay and even Mary may have found some kind of
redemption, but, as is hinted at strongly by the lingering presence of Uncle
John, they’re far from home and dry.
The Herald, February 8th 2013
ends
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