Reviews of 'A Little Fantasy'
Firstly thank you to those wonderful people who have sent me reviews of the
show, either their own or from the media. I'd love to hear what you think of it
- as I'm in
© Ksenija
Horvat
Reproduced with permission
A Little Fantasy - World Premiere tour
Devised by The company
Director - Paul Hunter
Design - Naomi Wilkinson
Music - Iain Johnstone
Choreographer - Frank McConnell
Artistic Adviser - John Wright
Dialect Coach - Gill MacCulloch
Company - Told by an Idiot email
Cast - here
Venue - Traverse Theatre Edinburgh 10 Cambridge Street BO 0131 228 1404
Dates - 20 - 23 November at 8pm also workshop
Further Tour Dates and Times - to follow
Seen to review at Traverse Theatre Edinburgh
Run Time - 1 hours 30 mins without an interval
Reviewer - Ksenija Horvat
A chance to become children again.
While a single spotlight focuses on a young legless man reading a book in the top right corner of a curious wooden staircase - that stands as a metaphor for a hierarchy, a power-struggle, the life itself - one must acknowledge that A Little Fantasy will not be an ordinary show. Rightly so, because, after all, it has been devised by Told by an Idiot, a company that can hardly be seen as an ordinary theatre company.
Ever since John Wright, a prominent proponent of
mask theatre, joined forces with his former students from Middlesex
Polytechnic, Hayley Carmichael and Paul Hunter, to produce On the Verge of
Exploding (Edinburgh Festival, 1993) Told by an Idiot has become known as one
of the most challenging devised physical theatre companies in the
A Little Fantasy, their newest production, is no exception to the well-established rule. Visually stunning in its simplicity (Naomi Wilkinsons set design is probably the best to be seen in Traverse's main theatre in recent times), and backed by spot-on use of lighting and sound (including the fine original score by Iain Johnstone), it is a delightful theatrical spread to titillate all of your senses.
Inspired by Flannery O'Connor's stories of dysfunctional families, the power struggles, the egos and the ties, her fertile imagination lets five exceptional actors explore. They bring the whole range of human emotions and bonds in their purest and most poignant forms. All through movement, rhythm, and juxtaposition of different performative styles, including subtle allusions to early gangster movies (Jimmy Cagney) and B/W romances (Bette Davis's Now, Voyager from 1942).
Hayley Carmichael shines as mysterious Carol,
Lisa Hammond is superb as her sidekick Lana Wilson, Ged Simmons is utterly
disarming as a charming cad Enoch Baxter, while Jane Guernier
and Rachel Donovan give fine performances as Enoch's long-suffering wife Eloise
and mistress Bonny respectively.
True, half way through the production you will be wondering what on earth does all this mean. And yes, you will leave the theatre feeling slightly bemused at the lack of a definitive story line but not all things in life make sense. One does not necessarily need to understand everything that is thrown ones way. This production will make you giggle, it will make you dip deeply into your own emotions and recognise situations from your own life. Engaging on different levels, you leave the theatre feeling as if an invisible burden has been lifted off your shoulders.
Elizabeth Taylor once said, "Everybody
should have a chance at a breathtaking piece of folly at least once in his
life". Prehaps Told by an Idiot are trying to tell us is that it is all
right to allow ourselves that chance, and become children once again. Whatever
their aspirations, one thing is certain. A Little Fantasy utterly entertains.
© Ksenija Horvat
Cast:
Carol - Hayley Carmichael
Lucy May, Child 1 and Bonny Warren - Rachel Donovan
Mrs
Lana Wilson - Lisa Hammond,
Jeff Hopewell, Gonga and Enoch Baxter - Ged Simmons
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LITTLE FANTASY, TRAVERSE THEATRE,
THE American short story is truly a thing of
wonder. Set on a generic map of smalltown backwaters occupied by blue-collar
idealists, beautiful losers, and slint-eyed drifters, all meshed together by
shades of gingham overalls and dreams of leaving such a tumbledown medicine
show for the lure of the city, it sure beats the socks off a bodice-ripper. But
how to adapt and
dramatise the routine mix of the humdrum and unspoken epiphanies without
recourse to sentimentalism?
Told By An Idiot's eccentric and fantastical take on Flannery O'Connor opts for accentuating larger-than-life local colour with such charm and playful abandon as to transcend its literary origins entirely and make it their own.
It's a world of Jimmy Cagney lookalike
competitions, extended affairs with would-be actresses, and the exotica of
Utilising a range of physical tics and a
dressing-up box-load of colour clashes, the five performers excel as they
conjure up a world run on hope: one day you might end up doing something
glamorous, or be someone better,
and it's as pertinent these days, when even the geeky kid on the street can be
a pop idol, as it was in the depression era here.
Director Paul Hunter does for O'Connor what Robert Altman did for Raymond Carver in Short Cuts. It's as if The Waltons had been interpreted by Dali and lifted into the clouds magnificently by Iain Johnstone's marching score.
This is a joyous piece of nonsense to be treasured.
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The Scotsman
THEATRE REVIEW: A Little Fantasy
Sky's the limit for stuff of fantasies
Reviewed by: Thom Dibdin
INSPIRED and inspiring lunacy is on the menu at The Traverse all this week with a piece of theatre which defies convention and dares to be different.
Which is exactly what you would hope for from a theatre company called Told By An Idiot. Not that there is anything idiotic about this little fantasy, which plays around with the short stories of American writer Flannery O'Connor.
This is the
In this land of unbounded opportunity there is, equally, no boundary which the opportunists feel ashamed to cross - people like the diminutive Lana Wilson (Lisa Hammond).
A Bible-dispensing con-artist, she appears one day on a hick farm run by Mrs Hopewell and her one-legged son, Jeff. A picture of sophistication, Lana seduces the arrogant Jeff with a single touch - and leaves with his wooden leg stuffed in her big black bag of Bibles.
Then there's the fantasist Carol, played by Hayley Carmichael. Only slightly less diminutive than Lana, she's in love with a fictional ape, Gonga. And when this simian star of the silver screen makes a "live" appearance, Carol is there to trade grunts and hang, lovingly, round his hairy neck.
More mundane in his seizing of opportunity is Enoch Baxter, played by the gangly Ged Simmons. As Bette Davis reaches her final line of Now Voyager, the one about reaching for the moon when you have the stars, Enoch is discovered in subsequent performances at the same cinema with different women crying on his shoulder.
What sets the production apart is the way it succeeds in conveying highly involved developments of plot and character with the sparsest slices of dialogue.
As the actors go about their business on the stage, with only the gentlest suggestion of a soundtrack, it is as if a whole story were being narrated out loud.
The meeting of Lana and Carol in the cinema is conveyed with only the lines of Bette Davis to illuminate it. But where Enoch's wife and girlfriend were weeping openly, these two cynics are laughing openly.
A Little Fantasy is worth sticking with . At first it all seems irrelevant, as if the company were being crazy just for the sake of it, but as the characters settle in, it all becomes more coherent.
That coherence is provided by the pairing of Lana and Carol. On a simplistic level, it is their size which makes the fantasy of the title "little", and, on another level, it is a telling of the little fantasies in which they become embroiled. But it is also about the fantasies which every character uses to get them through their day.
It is the fantasy of the cinema, of glamour and of being able to become whoever you want to.
With excellent performances, particularly from Hammond and Carmichael, this is a production that has both the stars and the moon in its hands.
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Just seen "A Little Fantasy" at the Traverse last night 20/11 and was
blown away. Loved it - I could have watched it for another hour or more. High
points were the Cagney lookey-likey competition and the bowling alley scene -
but there was so much more to love.
Saw Hayley in "Street of Crocodiles" ages ago (a work as yet unsurpassed in brilliance) and also in "The Birds" at the National.
David Smythe
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My wife and I went to see little fantasy on Friday 15 November at Sheffield Crucible. We both agreed afterwards that this was the best thing we had seen for years - a brilliant cast of talented actors, the production was original, funny,sad,moving and great entertainment. It was so good we nearly went the night after to see it again. Well done to all the cast and production staff for 90 minutes of pure magic.
Steve and Janet Slingsby
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The play was brilliant!
Linda C
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New
Statesman -
A strange story told by an
idiot - Amy Rosenthal is left speechless by a devised play that defies
definition
A Little Fantasy, devised and performed by the multitalented company Told by an Idiot, was developed as part of the London International Mime Festival, but it is more than a mime show. Part mime, part dance, with lush music and spare dialogue, it defies definition.
At first, Naomi Wilkinson's set appears to be nothing more than bleached grey raked seating with a stack of hay or grass in the top right corner. But as the show progresses, it becomes, among other things, a farm, a cinema, a bowling alley, the ocean and even a two-seater plane. Sensitively lit by John Mackenzie and exploited with skill and invention by director Paul Hunter, its cunning trapdoors lift and close, water drenches the actors from nowhere and each location feels momentarily real. Inspired by the short stories of Mary Flannery O'Connor, the plot is not easy to explain. Indeed, it initially seems to be a series of bizarre and engaging vignettes. In the first, a mother and daughter wordlessly pursue an invisible rooster until they catch it, put a bag over its head and cut its throat. Perched on the haystack in a dim light, another actor makes the sounds of the animal. Not a word needs to be spoken in this superb mime; we believe absolutely in the life and death of the rooster.
Having bagged their bird, Mrs Hopewell and young Lucy May receive a curious visitor. Superbly played by the diminutive Lisa Hammond, Lana Wilson purports to be selling Bibles, but what she actually does is briefly seduce Mrs Hopewell's hapless son and make off with his wooden leg. One might wonder what place there is in the world for a Bible-flogging kleptomaniac with a wooden leg in her handbag. But then Lana crosses paths with Carol (the excellent Hayley Carmichael), a bottle-blonde Southern belle who is in love with Gonga, a gorilla-suited movie star. When he rejects her, Carol's life is robbed of meaning, and like Lana she's a misfit in the world. Then the misfits find each other, and the adventure begins.
Meanwhile, in the more earthbound subplot, Enoch Baxter (Ged Simmonds) vacillates over leaving his wife, Eloise, (Jane Guernier) for his mistress Bonny (Rachel Donovan).
Lana and Carol embark on a life of zany crime, in a plot so wildly unpredictable and so well directed that our attention never wavers. There is always something happening, the stage is never empty and every transition into a new scene is seamless, covered by Iain Johnstone's delicious, bluesy music and Frank McConnell's deft choreography. Thus with a minimum of dialogue and a joyful disregard for exposition, we are swept into the world of the play and not, as so often occurs in the theatre, into a little fantasy of our own.
The five actors, who between them play all the parts, are amazingly versatile, both clownish and wholly convincing. They are masters of mime (when they sit munching imaginary poultry, there is no doubt about what they are eating) and each one of them captures exquisitely the tragicomic sensibility of the piece. At times achingly tender, it never strays into sentimentality, and the pathos is always undercut by jubilant humour.
Flannery O'Connor believed 'the truth doesn't change according to our ability to stomach it'. The world she wrote about was a tough one, and similarly A Little Fantasy is full of injustice and immorality. Lana and Carol are lawless and self-serving, robbing the trusting Bonny and allowing her to be imprisoned for their crime. Despite this, we love them for their embrace of life and for their friendship, which is a love story in itself. At the ambiguous end, when Carol appears to have drowned, it is almost unbearable to think that having found her soul mate, Lana is going to be alone again in such a cruel world.
A Little Fantasy is unlike anything you'll have seen before. Imaginative, touching and hilarious, this is devised theatre at its best, and the obvious solidarity of the company gives it a polish sometimes lacking in such work. It's a magical event.
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The
Guardian -
Lyn Gardner
The work of the visual theatre company Told by an Idiot has always had
something in common with a particular kind of American short story: homely,
whimsical, something gossamer spun on the slightest nod of the head or beady
turn of the eye. In A Little Fantasy, the show that celebrates the company's
10th year, Lana and Carol embark on a two-women crime spree to feed their
dreams; Bonny falls victim to her fantasies of eating lobster in swanky Kansas
with her married lover, Enoch - and the whole town turns out for the Jimmy
Cagney lookalike contest.
The absurd and perfectly ordinary sit side by side, Bette Davis's grand screen
passion and Bonny's smalltown one; bowling and flying; men in
Inspired by the short stories of Flannery O'Connor, a writer whose characters
have been described as "wholeheartedly horrible, and almost better than
life", the show is its own quirky self from the way it looks - Naomi
Wilkinson's design provides a series of wooden steps that somehow evoke the
midwest and cater for some terrific visual moments - to the way it is performed
with split-second timing.
However, as with almost all devised shows, there are things that probably
should never have escaped from the rehearsal room, and the whole thing takes
too long to really get into gear.
You leave the theatre not feeling that you have seen the most essential thing
ever, but pleased to have spent time with the characters; you seldom laugh
aloud (but smile a lot), never cry (but feel a pang of the heart), and find
yourself enveloped in a complete world. Theatre is a better place for Told by
an Idiot, who show us lives so ordinary that they are lives so much less
ordinary.
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The Times
The
The script is saddled with a fuzzy ending, but the director Paul Hunter's
staging is consistently inventive. Naomi Wilkinson's set of tiered benches is
discreetly fitted with trap doors, ramps and ladders. It and the astute cast
work on our imaginations, allowing the locations to shift easily from field to
bowling alley to airplane to swimming pool. The actors find the comic dignity
in marginal people whose quirks are quickly and strongly established.
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The Independent
K.Basset
For a long stretch, A Little Fantasy doesn't
look as if it's going anywhere much either. Yet the physical theatre troupe,
Told By An Idiot, always have something inspired up their sleeve. Directed by Paul
Hunter, this is a company-devised adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's mid-20th
century short stories, set in
But Naomi Wilkinson's set of raked pews and trapdoors transmutes into roof
tops, biplanes and a stormy ocean quite magically. Hayley Carmichael and Lisa
Hammond also move in the closing scenes, as they dive under the waves to a
grief-stricken yet ecstatic world of free-flowing dreams. By the end, you feel
as if you've seen something really extraordinary.
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Financial Times
THE ARTS: A welcome return to form
By Ian Shuttleworth
Told By An Idiot is a theatre company centred upon a trio of brilliant practitioners
in their field: Hayley Carmichael, Paul Hunter and John Wright. However, the
last couple of their productions I saw left me not just disappointed, but
outright worried that they were selling themselves short with a kind of theatrical
doodling. The title of their latest production, A Little Fantasy, did not
inspire hope. But I left the Soho Theatre buoyed up after witnessing a welcome
return to form.
The piece is based loosely on the writings of Flannery O'Connor, whose gallery
of southern
Thereafter, matters shift to an anonymous small town, where the same knot
of characters keep combining in different permutations, like a more intricate
down-home version of Short Cuts: Enoch Baxter may or may not leave his wife
for his former secretary after a two-year affair, and Lana, the diminutive
bunco artist from the first scene, teams up with Carol in both friendship
and fraud.
It could be any time in the 1930s or 1940s: there is a slight but unspecified
Great Depression air to the proceedings, although the latest blockbuster to
play the town picture house is Now, Voyager, whose final scene we hear voiced
by different cast members three or four times over. Everyone's favourite movie
star, though, is Gonga, who is either a talking ape or a guy in a gorilla
suit - it doesn't really matter, as either is appropriately O'Connoresque.
Hunter directs the cast of five with the company's customary blend of lightness
and precision. New collaborator Jane Guernier fits right in with a routine
of comically protracted eye-acting during a scene about a James Cagney lookalike
contest, and Lisa Hammond has the considerable technique and sensitivity required
in her role as a kind of Mini-Me to Carmichael (for whom high praise can now
simply be taken as read).
As usual with Told By An Idiot, there's no profundity to be uncovered, just
their characteristic wry yet loving take on various kinds of human interaction.
This time, deliciously, one can't ask for more.
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The
Telegraph -
At last - a mime show to shout about
Charles Spencer reviews A Little Fantasy at Soho Theatre
There are few combinations of words that strike more dread into this reviewer's
heart than the London International Mime Festival.
It is cunningly held each year in January, when there is usually little competition from more mainstream productions, meaning that, despite my best endeavours, I don't always manage to avoid all of it. And I can count several of the evenings I have spent at LIMF productions among the most footlingly pointless of my life.
I mean, would you fancy an evening watching an underwater puppet show performed to a recording of Berlioz? No, of course you wouldn't. You'd very sensibly prefer to stay at home and listen to Berlioz in peace.
So it was with a heavy heart that I trudged up
Amazingly, however, A Little Fantasy turns out to be 90 minutes of pure pleasure, a deeply eccentric and beguiling show that puts one in mind of Theatre de Complicite in the days when they were still funny. Devised by the company and inspired by the short stories of Flannery O'Connor (1925-64), best known for her collection A Good Man is Hard to Find, the piece offers a tasty slice of deep-fried Southern Gothic.
The action is set in a small rural community
somewhere near
They are a couple of chortling con artists, out on the razz together, whose accomplishments include robbing a man of his false leg, urinating on an actor dressed up as a gorilla, and relieving the winner of a Jimmy Cagney lookalike contest of her big cash prize.
But these comic antics are counterpointed by a poignant romantic triangle, in which a tenpin bowling addict resolves to leave his good-natured wife for his secretary. Needless to say, Carol and Lana ensure that nothing goes according to plan.
These days it is entirely permissible for performers to speak in shows billed as mime, and Told by an Idiot's superb physical skills, which include a hilarious flying sequence and a brilliantly staged rendition of Cagney's Yankee Doodle Dandy, are accompanied by delightfully quirky dialogue delivered in excellent Southern accents.
You never know what is going to happen next in
this picaresque adventure, which is full of affectionate movie references, most
notably to Bette Davis in Now, Voyager, and greatly enhanced by Iain
Johnstone's marvellous original score, which conjures up the
The time zips by in Paul Hunter's consistently inventive and well-judged production, and, as well as the winningly mischievous performances of Carmichael and Hammond, there is versatile support from Jane Guernier, Rachel Donovan and Ged Simmons, playing three neatly drawn roles apiece. If you are looking for something startlingly fresh and original, A Little Fantasy is just the ticket.
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The Observer - Sunday January 19, 2003
Susannah Clapp
This is a power well understood by the company called Told by an Idiot, whose
new show is part of the London International Mime Festival: it contains speech,
but tells its stories through movement as much as words. Don't be misled by
the title. A Little Fantasy is a work of large imagination. Inspired by the
gothic stories of Flannery O'Connor and by Hollywood romances ranging from
Now, Voyager to Thelma and Louise, the company has devised a bewitching web
of American dreams and nightmares; it's often hard to know which is which.
When Lisa Hammond, 4ft 1in tall, first tittups across the stage with a bag
half her size, she's a Bible-belter with a liquor bottle cut into her Holy
Writ. Minutes later, she's taken a one-legged lover and run off with his artificial
limb. Shortly afterwards, she's formed a gang of two with Hayley Carmichael,
as open-faced and innocent-looking as Hammond is wily and sceptical. They
live on their wits; they go on the rob; they take part in a James Cagney look-alike
competition alongside a man, his wife and his mistress.
In the course of these changes, they persuade an audience that Naomi Wilkinson's
cunning design - bare tiers of benches with concealed trapdoors - is a row
of seats at the movies, the sidewalks flanking a busy road, the lanes of a
bowling alley. You never quite see the joins of these changes, any more than
you see the point at which the sweetness of the tale turns to sadness.
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Sunday Herald
Andrew Burnet
Other touring shows that caught my eye (and brought a tear to it) [included] A Little Fantasy, an imaginative adaptation by Told By An Idiot of Flannery O'Connor's quirky corn-belt tales.
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THEATREWORLD
....a sublime mix of taut drama, wild comedy and alarming images is released.
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London Theatre Guide
Told By An Idiot combine the short stories of Flannery O'Connor with their own innovations to tell a love story which features the pursuit of an unseen cockerel and a Jimmy Cagney impersonation contest.
See also The British
Theatre Guide
See also BBC London
***More reviews coming shortly!*****
