Theatre: Review - Bedtime Tales at Pentameters
SPOOKY, startling and more than a little bit fruity – is there a stranger show on in London this week?
The night began with a plea from theatre owner Leonie Scott Matthews to find a name for this “nameless” troupe – a hint that we were about to be taken on a trip into the unknown. “Fools, fools – you shouldn’t have come here,” cackled the cloaked and back-bent Prelude (Leo Faulkner), setting the tone for an evening flitting from child night terrors to waking reverie.
Bedtime Tales, a twisted take on the traditional fairytale fables, is a series of bite-size chunks of original music, dance and film. It includes a trailer featuring Katia Ivanova, star of Celebrity Big Brother – but this production was as far removed from a “reality” show as could be. Alice Old and Kayleigh Allenby, two young women from Hampstead who produced a similarly macabre adaptation of Alice in Wonderland last year, have assembled an innovative horde of young performers clearly transfixed by the darker recesses of the mind.
The scene of the night was the pulsating war-dance by Ms Allenby. She wheeled and flashed about the stage in a stuffed stocking costume like a pregnant Gollum on ecstasy. A special mention must go to Godfrey Old, Alice’s father, whose drunken cameo ended with him crashing spectacularly through the window of the Hansel and Gretel gingerbread house. Recommended.
Until January 23 • 020 7435 3648
TOM FOOT