Words by Jennifer Hayes | Production images by Camilla Adams
The magic of the season is alive and well at Tobacco Factory Theatres this year, with a festive masterpiece so jam-packed with charm, humour and warmth it’s impossible not to leave with your cup full of Christmas cheer.
A quintet of stars illuminates the theatre, darting and sparkling across the sky. Music plays from the old record-player set on an elevated, circular stage across which the night sky is mapped. Props are paired back and costumes are muted as we are invited to set aside the everyday and step into our imagination. The scene is set for a moonlit night in Rapunzel’s tower, where we meet our heroine, and begin a story that turns the traditional fairytale upside down.
Sharon Clark’s smart script captures the enormity of growing up, and with it the complex route to self-discovery, with wit and empathy in equal measures. Anna Marks Pryce‘s Rapunzel is an energetic, curious and practical girl, who wears her lengthy locks like a mountaineer’s harness. Despite being locked in a tower all her life, she is a multi-faceted, music-loving astronomer with very big feelings. But her lack of worldly experience leaves her unable to name them.
“My favourite character is Rapunzel,” declared my seven-year-old as we ate our ice creams in the interval. No wonder. She resonates perfectly with a young audience who too are experiencing the world anew, navigating big feelings as they struggle between the quest for independence and the safety of familiarity.
Rapunzel is joined on her journey by the sweetly nerdy Benito, played to perfection by Adam Mirsky. Despite his professions to be the fearless, ‘rufty tufty’ type, Benito sounds as uncertain as Rapunzel looks when he claims to be her ‘rescuer’. We soon find he is a far more endearing kind of hero, blending gentle bravery with earnest eagerness, and feelings just as big as Rapunzel’s own.
Marks Pryce and Mirsky are just two of a hugely talented cast, who between them cover multiple roles, as well as performing the music and songs that weave across genres to bring narrative and characters to life. Zweyla Mitchell Dos Santos’s queen is dazzlingly fabulous, while Phil King is hilarious as her flamboyant sidekick, Teazy-Weazy. Mischa Jardine laces her brusque and no-nonsense Seraphina with a dash of unpredictability that keeps us guessing right up to the end.
Of course, it’s not all lightness and joy. As we watch this fairytale for the modern world, it’s impossible not to reflect on the cruelty of the beauty industry, the greed of capitalism, and society’s constant demand for more, more, more play out as Rapunzel is hounded for her hair. Ultimately, though, this is a love story of the purest kind. A tale of growing up and letting go, of finding friendships and in them discovering ourselves.
All told, this is a fantastically inventive piece of theatre that traverses light and dark, physicality and emotion, all while wrapping the audience up in a cosy blanket of good feeling. To sum up? I’d have to agree with my daughter when she said: “I give it a 10 out of 10!’
Rapunzel: A Hairy Tale
Writer: Sharon Clark
Director: Tom Brennan
Composer: Tom Crosley-Thorne
Cast:
Mischa Jardine – Serafina
Phil King – Teazy Weazy
Anna Marks Pryce – Rapunzel
Adam Mirsky – Benito
Zweyla Mitchell Dos Santos – Donatella
Book tickets to Rapunzel: A Hairy Tale here | Until 17 January
The Tobacco Factory, Raleigh Rd, Southville, BS3 1TF
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