My guess is that Suzanne Andrade – writer, director, performer – was raised on a diet of Roald Dahl stories, or she read them by torchlight under her sheets. Her random collection of tales have that sensibility: an apparent childlike innocence that turns twisted and nasty in a terribly British way.

It’s awfully entertaining, what with animator, designer and projectionist Paul Barritt’s wacky animations creating visual contexts and effects that are occupied by Andrade and co-performer (and costume designer) Esme Appleton, to the live accompaniment of composer/ pianist/ singer-performer Lillian Henley.

The melodrama of silent films, including early cartoons, also informs the overall style – hence (I assume) the company’s name: 1927 (marking the heyday of silent films – e.g. Metropolis). Having won five awards at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival, the troupe has globe-trotted extensively, garnering further accolades en route to NZ.

The motif that opens and closes the show has Appleton running from a villain, pumping her arms above animated cartoon legs. This, then, is escapist comedy.

Topics include women choosing the devilish over the angelic; a cat consuming its nine lives; a weird dream involving star babies, girl guides and Jason Gunn (kudos for researching and adding local colour); a lodger’s fate at the hands of two orphaned sisters; Sinking Suburbia (“Little Julie is playing homeless again…”); the day all the housewives caught the clap; The Biscuit Tin Revolution, involving an uprising of gingerbread men; My Old (monkey-faced) Aunt; The Misadventure of Frau Helga von Zetterling (I hope I have the spelling right), involving more devilish imagery; The Grandmother (who was “old as the hills and twice as green”), which purloins someone from the audience to play the role; The Devil’s Boots Don’t Creak …

While it is presented as fluffy fun hiding spikes and toxins, essays – if not theses – could be written about the social commentary embedded therein. Consider this, for example, printed in the small but perfectly formed programme (author Suzanne Andrade):

1000s of men and women … Running!
The onlooker (a small man in a cheap high street suit)
Rolls his tabloid newspaper into the shape of a cone, holds it to his mouth and hollers
“You’re all going the wrong way!”
And all the running men and women turn and run for the sea and the only person left on dry land is a cheap man in a newspaper suit with a small cone …
He puts the cone on his head and now he is king!
The king in the tabloid crown roams the land in search of a queen, lo and behold he stumbles upon a small street woman (high on cheap suits)
He rolls up the remainder of his newspaper and bashes her over the head!
Then drags her, by the hair, to a very British pub that they will make their home
They drink from the beer taps!
Smash up the fruit machine!
And then, in a sea of bar snacks, they set about procreating …
While the rest of the world flounders at sea! 

How might we interpret this? As a cautionary tale about what might happen if the lower middle class should inherit the earth?

Your thoughts?

PS: I concur with those who say the Festival Club performance venue is cramped, uncomfortable and conducive to alienating audiences, which is hardly fair on the performers.
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