REVIEW: Malory Towers (2019)
Aug. 12th, 2019 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllMalory Towers, a Wise Children production (2019)
Starring: Izuka Hoyle (Darrell Rivers), Rose Shalloo (Mary Lou Askinson), Renee Lamb (Alicia Johns), Rebecca Collingwood (Gwendoline Lacey), Francesca Mills (Sally Hope), Vinnie Heaven (Bill Robinson) and, in this performance, Stephanie Hockley (Irene Dupont)
Adapted and directed by: Emma Rice.
This musical adaptation is to be found these summer holidays in the pop-up location of The Passenger Shed in Bristol, which is conveniently located just next door to Bristol Temple Meads station. The bespoke location (an empty hall) meant that the company could create a welcoming foyer with a giant hopscotch marked out on the floor and tables in the form of crosses. There was a big screen with quotes and messages projected in it, and the music of girlbands from The Supremes to Girls Aloud playing.
The set was a multi-tiered representation of key parts of the school with clever use of projection, visible before the show started, partly visible during the interval, during which, the actors in character invited the audience to the foyer to hear them sing a song and then urge us back to our seats.
The musical is bookended by a modern-day scene, where a bookworm is bullied for reading ‘Mallory Towers’ – the implication being that it has nothing to say to modern girls. As I was one of a multi-generational audience, overwhelmingly female, with mothers and grandparents having brought girls who clearly still read the books, the argument was already refuted. If it had not been, most of the musical would have done it.
Lively Darrell thinks she’s the luckiest girl in the world, coming to Mallory Towers – a school in a building that reminds some of a castle, a school where you can swim in the sea, a school where she’ll share a dormitory with girls who will become family over hijinx. Amusingly, all these girls use their full names for the first introductory scene. All are very different, from princessy Gwendoline, priggish (sorry, but she is) Sally, joker Alicia who’s been held back a year, scared Mary Lou, musical Irene to, eventually, Bill. The tomboy in the book is seen through a 2019 lens, and the casting is intentionally diverse. If I’m frank, I don’t know what Blyton would have made of that.
Izuka Hoyle is a winning heroine, although the section where Darrell is unfairly put into Coventry while Bill is introduced maybe diminishes the character. Her dancing was particularly finished. The antiheroine is the narcissistic and bullying Gwen – the instigator of some real cruelty, although the play explores her motivations. Her victim is Mary Lou (a brilliant comic creation). There was a lot of individually good singing, although sometimes the harmonies were unexpected. (I’m not sure if they had to adapt the show when I saw it, because Stephanie Hockley, credited as the musician in the programme, switched from playing Irene on the stage to doing so while providing accompaniment, which didn’t seem to cause a hitch in the performance). Add Heaven’s likeable Bill, and yes, there was a variety of girlhood, all different, with someone for the viewer to identify with.
We don’t see an adult – headmistress Miss Grayling is a projected shadow and Sheila Hancock’s voice. The bookending modern scenes emphasise that it is up to girls to sort out their own problems, while in Malory Towers, the girls’ parents are absent, if important influences. The play looks at why parents would send away their children (particularly Sally and Gwen’s parents) more interrogatively than Blyton does.
I loved the theatricality. The interval hinges around a dramatic and cleverly conceived cliffside rescue, but that is followed by big emotional moments, where the group supports Alicia and questions Gwen’s bad behaviour. The sense of how these girls entertained themselves comes through, with the show building up to the show within the show – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play of transformation, with Sally the producer turning into a monster – some self-parody from Emma Rice?
The musical numbers are a mix of adapted period songs and original numbers. The adaptation emphasises the second world war setting, and the impact of that shadow on education and families. But it also pulls out universal questions of character, belonging and growing up, with a modern sensibility and one or two witty, adult jabs – but not too much winking and nodding.
The songs are different styles, from a touch of soul, swing and even chansons as well as a more modern idiom. Some of the fun was that it wasn’t too polished (although it was obviously highly-rehearsed with enjoyable little details, like the use of hockey sticks, or both Darrell and Sally doing a cartwheel in one scene, suggesting why, despite their different personalities, they chummed up.)
As for my history with Blyton, I certainly was a fan back in the day, preferring Malory Towers to St Clare’s (because you always had favourites; I also preferred the Famous Five to the Secret Seven and had a fondness for The Faraway Tree and Five Finde-Outers and the Dog). But – and I singularly failed to do this with most other children’s books, obviously – I got rid of nearly all my Blyton books. The ones I regret are The Naughtiest Girl series, because it was co-educational, IIRC. But on the question of recollection, which made me hesitate a little about going to see this, it has been a long, long while since I read the books. I felt that it did a good job of distilling the essence of them.
I believe Rice didn’t grow up reading the books, came to the project in an interrogative spirit, but was won over by the sense of community, and this came through in the musical adaptation. It was a lot of fun, but also touching as all these girls forged a friendship and sense of belonging, remaining very different, but rubbing the edges off each other.
Starring: Izuka Hoyle (Darrell Rivers), Rose Shalloo (Mary Lou Askinson), Renee Lamb (Alicia Johns), Rebecca Collingwood (Gwendoline Lacey), Francesca Mills (Sally Hope), Vinnie Heaven (Bill Robinson) and, in this performance, Stephanie Hockley (Irene Dupont)
Adapted and directed by: Emma Rice.
This musical adaptation is to be found these summer holidays in the pop-up location of The Passenger Shed in Bristol, which is conveniently located just next door to Bristol Temple Meads station. The bespoke location (an empty hall) meant that the company could create a welcoming foyer with a giant hopscotch marked out on the floor and tables in the form of crosses. There was a big screen with quotes and messages projected in it, and the music of girlbands from The Supremes to Girls Aloud playing.
The set was a multi-tiered representation of key parts of the school with clever use of projection, visible before the show started, partly visible during the interval, during which, the actors in character invited the audience to the foyer to hear them sing a song and then urge us back to our seats.
The musical is bookended by a modern-day scene, where a bookworm is bullied for reading ‘Mallory Towers’ – the implication being that it has nothing to say to modern girls. As I was one of a multi-generational audience, overwhelmingly female, with mothers and grandparents having brought girls who clearly still read the books, the argument was already refuted. If it had not been, most of the musical would have done it.
Lively Darrell thinks she’s the luckiest girl in the world, coming to Mallory Towers – a school in a building that reminds some of a castle, a school where you can swim in the sea, a school where she’ll share a dormitory with girls who will become family over hijinx. Amusingly, all these girls use their full names for the first introductory scene. All are very different, from princessy Gwendoline, priggish (sorry, but she is) Sally, joker Alicia who’s been held back a year, scared Mary Lou, musical Irene to, eventually, Bill. The tomboy in the book is seen through a 2019 lens, and the casting is intentionally diverse. If I’m frank, I don’t know what Blyton would have made of that.
Izuka Hoyle is a winning heroine, although the section where Darrell is unfairly put into Coventry while Bill is introduced maybe diminishes the character. Her dancing was particularly finished. The antiheroine is the narcissistic and bullying Gwen – the instigator of some real cruelty, although the play explores her motivations. Her victim is Mary Lou (a brilliant comic creation). There was a lot of individually good singing, although sometimes the harmonies were unexpected. (I’m not sure if they had to adapt the show when I saw it, because Stephanie Hockley, credited as the musician in the programme, switched from playing Irene on the stage to doing so while providing accompaniment, which didn’t seem to cause a hitch in the performance). Add Heaven’s likeable Bill, and yes, there was a variety of girlhood, all different, with someone for the viewer to identify with.
We don’t see an adult – headmistress Miss Grayling is a projected shadow and Sheila Hancock’s voice. The bookending modern scenes emphasise that it is up to girls to sort out their own problems, while in Malory Towers, the girls’ parents are absent, if important influences. The play looks at why parents would send away their children (particularly Sally and Gwen’s parents) more interrogatively than Blyton does.
I loved the theatricality. The interval hinges around a dramatic and cleverly conceived cliffside rescue, but that is followed by big emotional moments, where the group supports Alicia and questions Gwen’s bad behaviour. The sense of how these girls entertained themselves comes through, with the show building up to the show within the show – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play of transformation, with Sally the producer turning into a monster – some self-parody from Emma Rice?
The musical numbers are a mix of adapted period songs and original numbers. The adaptation emphasises the second world war setting, and the impact of that shadow on education and families. But it also pulls out universal questions of character, belonging and growing up, with a modern sensibility and one or two witty, adult jabs – but not too much winking and nodding.
The songs are different styles, from a touch of soul, swing and even chansons as well as a more modern idiom. Some of the fun was that it wasn’t too polished (although it was obviously highly-rehearsed with enjoyable little details, like the use of hockey sticks, or both Darrell and Sally doing a cartwheel in one scene, suggesting why, despite their different personalities, they chummed up.)
As for my history with Blyton, I certainly was a fan back in the day, preferring Malory Towers to St Clare’s (because you always had favourites; I also preferred the Famous Five to the Secret Seven and had a fondness for The Faraway Tree and Five Finde-Outers and the Dog). But – and I singularly failed to do this with most other children’s books, obviously – I got rid of nearly all my Blyton books. The ones I regret are The Naughtiest Girl series, because it was co-educational, IIRC. But on the question of recollection, which made me hesitate a little about going to see this, it has been a long, long while since I read the books. I felt that it did a good job of distilling the essence of them.
I believe Rice didn’t grow up reading the books, came to the project in an interrogative spirit, but was won over by the sense of community, and this came through in the musical adaptation. It was a lot of fun, but also touching as all these girls forged a friendship and sense of belonging, remaining very different, but rubbing the edges off each other.
