Aladdin's Tales - Marian Street Theatre

Aladdin's Tales - Marian Street Theatre

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Posted 2017-09-26 by Brydie Wrightfollow

Mon 25 Sep 2017 - Sat 07 Oct 2017

Following the success of Beauty and the Beast's winter-run, Marian Street Theatre for Young People (MSTFYP) brings us a lively production of Aladdin's Tales , this September school holidays. Knox Grammar Cultural Centre in Wahroonga, will host the season.



Though a musical comedy with pantomime elements, MSTFYP's adaptation is nothing like the Disney hit movie. Instead, it is based on the 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights. Writers and lyricists Jenny Jackson and Catherine Martin, have adapted two of the 1001's most child-friendly narratives. Director Terry Ryan has provided a new vision for the popular play, based on the contemporary experience of children living with boredom and few resources, in a refugee camp. This is not explicit and the musical remains playful but it underlines MSTFYP's teaching ethos of motivating its young performers to another level of empathy with their characters.



Considering most of the amateur cast members have never performed in front of a live audience before, I would say that Ryan's directing technique has worked. He has created a perfectly gelled ensemble of team players, each taking turns with the starring role. It's a joy to watch a young cast enjoying their art and their new-found experience as live players, deftly handling anything the audience throws at them.

The musical unfolds as a play within a play, opening in a far eastern marketplace, where the children are poor and have little to do but sell their wares and tell stories, to brighten their days. Within this storytelling construct, Margie McCrae's creative team, toy with the question - how do children play? Through random assignation of roles as The Tales unfold, they capture the unpredictable, childish essence of 'play pretend'. It's a clever device and the audience enjoys being surprised at every turn.



Set design by Derrick Cox and lighting by Grant Fraser, work brilliantly throughout the performance, to conjure up a mysterious Eastern-feel and shadow-play special effects. Against this visually pleasing backdrop, appears the famed storyteller Schererazade (acted beautifully by Meha Batra), the tyrannical Sultan of Sasan (performed with excellent comic timing by Grace Dodd) and the brave, young Aladdin (an exuberant Dion Carrothers).



As the packed house, waited with baited breath for the appearance of the Genie, we were introduced to the 'smelly' morality tale of Abu Kassim's Everlasting Shoes, with a wonderfully hapless performance by Bevin Nanayakkara. The young audience was enthralled by the idea of Kassim's ponging footwear and his golden donations to the crowd. The kids, many of whom were under ten, laughed and cried out in all the right places, demonstrating the true joy of watching children's theatre. The adults had a blast too, with a special nod for Andrew Chesser's humorous score, which played to Western perceptions of old Arabian culture.





And in a footnote to this review, the Friends of Marian Street Theatre held their September 'Sixty Minute Soiree', on the evening of Aladdin's Tales' opening show. Veteran actor and guest speaker, Ron Haddrick, described the sense of community that made the now-closed Marian Street Theatre, unique, in its glory days. Pending the results of a Feasibility Study on funding the re-opening of the theatre, the plan is to develop an 'Arts Hub' for Ku-ring-gai. The complex's objective will be to foster that lapsed sense of cultural community and provide a permanent residence for Marian Street Theatre for Young People, among many other quality initiatives. Watch this space...

#community_theatre
#family
#north_shore
#school_holidays
#theatre_reviews
#september
!date 25/09/2017 -- 07/10/2017
%wnsydney
189069 - 2023-06-16 03:15:02

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