Review Theatre: Hansel and Gretel | Barbican | performance

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The Review - THEATRE by ANGELA COBBINAH
Published: 30 December 2008

Children are a dish best served...

HANSEL AND GRETEL
Barbican

ONE of the pleasures of going to the theatre is sitting back and being entertained for 90 minutes.
So it took a bit of an effort to adjust to the Barbican’s “promenade” version of Hansel and Gretel, which means that the audience moves round the different stage sets, and, for the most part, watches the performance standing up.
Standing up was hard work but it was great fun to be on stage and to walk in Hansel and Gretel’s footsteps through the creepy forest installation, created in the Barbican’s cavernous back stage, complete with its brushing vines, giant spiders and broken, blood-spattered dolls.
The Scottish children’s theatre company Catherine Wheels has updated Grimms’ fairy tale to the 1960s, where the step-mum is a suburban housewife driven half mad by boredom and the hubbie is a doting but weak father who loves watching The Goodies with his children.
The dialogue is as spare as the single cello accompaniment as Hansel and Gretel are abandoned in the forest and end up at the gingerbread house.
We are ushered in and invited – at last – to sit down and watch the party. But the little old lady who welcomes the children turns out to be the female equivalent of the mad axe man as she plans her next meal with the help of the book, Cooking With Kids. It’s funny and scary at the same time. The verdict? Fun concept but hard work. Children will love it though.
Until January 4
020 7638 8891

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