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This holiday season, find something extraordinary. The Genesis Signature Event is your moment.
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To experience power you can feel. And every Genesis comes with Sirius xm. Three months of ad, free music plus sports news and more make Genesis a memorable start to your season. ACAST powers the World's Best Podcasts Here's a show that we recommend.
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Unless you've been living in a cave or counting your breaths at a silent retreat for the last decade, you may have noticed that the world is burning down around you. In fact, you may start to believe that the ancient gods are cursing you and your fellow humans.
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Unlike you, the humans from Greek mythology didn't have to wonder. From the monster fueled wanderings of Odysseus to literally anyone who encountered Theseus, there was no question that the ancient people understood bad luck, bad people, and most importantly, fickle gods. When the headlines get to be too much, there's no better way to ignore the future than to take comfort in the past. Every week, Liv Albert retells a wide range of stories from ancient Greece and Rome in the podcast let's Talk About Myths Baby. Not for the Faint of Heart, Liv unpacks violent plot twists that will make you squirm and ironic turns of fate that may make you pee your pants from hysterical laughter. Let's Talk About Myths Baby is available wherever you get your podcasts.
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ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com this new production of Roald Dahl's the BFG from the Royal Shakespeare Company gives new meaning to the first two letters of the acronym with a giant story that, in addition to being big and friendly, is broadly fine. And for a family festive offering, perhaps that's enough. But from the company that gave us Matilda the Musical, I have to say I was expecting something at least a little bit more magical. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre as a theatre critic and content creator here on social media. This evening I attended the opening night performance of the BFG at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon. It was actually my first time reviewing in their largest space, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, and I was very excited to go and see this one. Not just because it was being directed by one of the venue's two co artistic directors, Daniel Evans, who I think has been doing fantastic work over the last few months, but also because that entire venue itself has something of a pedigree and a reputation for brilliant theatrical productions from Roald Dahl's works. I'm talking of course about the long running, multi award winning West End hit Matilda, though admittedly I do think that conversation has progressed a little bit around the ethical implications of adapting Dahl's work. And it's a little bit different to a J.K. rowling conversation because Roald Dahl is no longer alive and so there's a real death of the author factor at play here in separating the art that he's created for children for many generations from the opinions of the artist himself. Even with the conversation having been reignited by the recent West End hit play, soon to transfer to Broadway, Giant, which is an incredibly different piece of theatre from the one I'm going to be telling you about today. We're going to talk about this adaptation of the bfg. What I thought of it, what the creative choices were like, whether it made sense to me that this was a play with music rather than a musical, and hopefully some indication as to whether or not you would enjoy it. Not just at the RSC where it is currently playing for the festive period, but also on its future life. This is a co production with multiple venues including Chichester Festival Theatre, which it will visit in the new year. Of course, if you have already seen the bfg, I would love to know what you thought of the production in the comments section down below. Feel free to share all of your thoughts and if you enjoy listening to mine, make sure to subscribe, follow me on podcast platforms and stay tuned for more theatre reviews coming so very soon. In the meantime, let's talk about why I was a little disappointed by the bfg. So a little context on the source material. The B.F.F.G. is a 1982 children's novel created by Roald Dahl. This stage realization of the BFG has been adapted by Tom Wells, with additional material from Jenny Wharton, in which a young orphan girl is taken from her orphanage by a giant who takes her back to Giant country, where she learns about the way in which they live, eventually eventually coming to name him BFG for Big Friendly Giant, once she realizes that he isn't actually going to eat her. Instead, the BFG likes to sustain himself on a diet of objectively unappetizing snozcumbers, essentially Giant Country's answer to a proud vegan. The same cannot be said, however, for his really unfortunate neighbors, who are even more B than he is, but just a little less F. Which is to say they're bigger and less friendly. You got the idea, you understood I didn't need to explain it. Things become even more troubling when Sophie discovers that these other giants are in fact man eaters. And whoa, here they come, desperately trying not to sing it right now. And by here I mean towards England, where their plan is to go and eat a bunch of orphaned children. In case you thought they were whatsoever morally gray characters, they're really not. With Sophie and the BFG hatching a plan involving the BFG's talent for creating dreams for children in order to rally more support to help them. Specifically by creating a trogglehomper, a really tremendous nightmare to whisper into into the year of the non specific Queen of the time, who in the past has been portrayed as Victoria. She wasn't in this version. It was giving the late Queen Elizabeth II in order to convince her of the imminent danger of the approaching giants. That's as much of the plot as I'm going to tell you. But like the rest of the Roald Dahl stories, you may be familiar with the likes of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda. We're talking an awful lot about how important it is to believe children and what is gained by allowing yourself to see the world that we all live in through their courageous and honest and morally upright eyes. One of the things I did enjoy about this production is the way in which it really drew out from the material. This idea of these unexpected allies against the evil giants finding a sense of kinship because they all recognized in each other the quality of being ignored or being sidelined, and this sense of loneliness as much as anything else. It's a story of three very unusual friends, four really coming together and finding each other's companionship. Because you have these young children living in an orphanage, one of whom is taken away by the BFG and she finds out more about the way that he has been living. And then unexpectedly, a lot of overlap with the life being led by the Queen herself, who is doted on and has all of these people to take care of her and do things for her, but is feeling lonely and more than a little bored because she is so cushioned and protected that she's not able to enjoy her life or look forward to anything. Meaning that when the thrill of danger does eventually rear its giant, giant head, it's actually quite exciting for her. Now, most of the plot that I described all takes place in the first act of this stage production, but it's really not very long. It ran at just under two hours this evening, I think, including a 20 minute interval. And that's not particularly unsurprising. Because it is more slight as a story, as a narrative, than the likes of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Matilda. I do think one thing that this gets right, which Charlie really didn't when it was turned into a musical, is where to put the interval. It leaves us in a place of suspense and sets us up for a second act that is probably more rewarding than the first. At the same time, I was left with this feeling that the whole thing was just a little bit thin and a little bit insubstantial in some ways. And that may be entirely preferable to a family audience. And ultimately, I give deference to the parents and children who are going to go and watch this. And if that's more palatable to that age range, then that's absolutely fine. Fine. But I do think that you would occasionally gain a little something at several moments. It doesn't need to have a full score of songs, but I think there are a couple of moments where the story really could sing and we could articulate the emotional beats of it with a little bit more clarity. Perhaps a song about the creation of dreams. There's this sequence late in the first act when they are crafting a dream together, familiar of when Ralph and Vanellope are building this dream race car in the film Wreck It Ralph. And it so felt like a moment that really wanted to sing. There are a couple more in the show as well, and even if they're not the most emotionally articulate songs that really accelerate the plot forwards, I think they would inject just a little bit of a sense of magic and joy and a little more energy, perhaps. We spend an awful lot of the first act once we have left the orphanage in a cave and there is this sort of creepingly bleak quality that begins to emerge. And you want for those sort of glimmers of joy and levity to be even brighter and even more colourful. It's going to sound like something of a harsh criticism when I tell you that the curtain call sequence and the bows, when they had a lot of colourful and vivid and exciting, explosive things happening in the auditorium, was probably a visual highlight of the production. And we will talk about the puppetry and we will talk about the way in which this story is being staged and told in the next section, when I talk about the performances and the creative elements, but just in terms of the writing, whether it was songs or whether it was the presence of an entire narrator character, or at least moments of narration, either from the BFG himself or from Sophie, it felt as though there was a story struggling to be told here. And I mean we understand everything because there aren't that many different ideas to grasp. The plot synopsis itself is reasonably short, but you have these dream sequences and these travel moments and even a little bit of combat in the second act in which dialogue becomes slightly sparse. And this is adapted from the page and it also has this really wonderful relationship to language because the way in which the BFG himself speaks is a little bit muddled, is a little grammatically incorrect in a deeply charming way, and he has either mispronounced or entirely reworked versions of words that remain in his vocabulary, as well as fantastical terms for things from Giant country that we don't know, like snozzcumbers and trogglehompers, which I think was the name for the green drink that he distributed at the end, which they were serving as a novelty mocktail at the Press night performance and if they continue to do so can recommend the Trogglehomper. I will say that was that was a nice beverage, but there was a real delight in all of the fantastical language and you wanted to be able to spend even more time with that rather than with the thing ultimately feeling a little bit soft spoken. As a piece of theatre, there were still a couple of delightfully witty turns of phrase, like the line eating human beings beings is not right at all. It is very, very left or in response to the line don't be worried little girl. Sophie replying, I'm not worried, medium sized man. And with that you still got this really clear sense of the value of childhood wisdom, especially against stubborn and foolish short sighted grown ups, which you get in the best Dahl stories. But I don't think that this one necessarily, even going back to the source material, has quite as much to say or has quite the same theatrical capability as a Matilda or a handful of others. That being said, there was an awful lot that was exciting and stunning about the way that it was brought to the stage, including the rendering and portrayal of the Big Friendly Giant himself. Let's talk about the creator.
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Limu Emu and Doug here we have.
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The Limu emu in its natural habitat.
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Helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
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Cut the camera.
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They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. Affiliates excludes Massachusetts creative choices. So like I said, this production has been directed by Daniel Evans. I think the first thing that we need to talk about is all of the puppetry, which is what is being used to bring the BFG as well as his other more B and less F giant friends to the stage. This has been designed and directed by the brilliant Toby Olier, and this is truly the season for puppetry on stage at the moment. I just spoke about Pinocchio at Shakespeare's Globe in a shorter review. Of course, Paddington Bear is charming West End audiences right now, but as you might expect from his name, none of them are even beginning to rival the Big Friendly Giant for scale. Although it isn't as straightforward as having one giant BFG puppet talking to a lot of human sized characters, there's something very interesting about the way our perspective shifts on a couple of occasions, because the first thing that happens is we see a small version of a building on stage, sort of like a dollhouse with the roof being lifted up to show us a bedroom, two beds, then arrive on stage to show that we are transported into that world where we meet two human child characters portrayed by fantastic, charming child actors. We'll talk about the performances a little later, but when one of them is carried away in the night by the bfg, it isn't the large puppet that we see to begin with, it is the human sized human actor who is portraying the bfg, one John Leader. Of course, when Sophie eventually emerges from the bundled up duvet that she has been carried off in and has her first interaction with the bfg, we need some way of understanding the difference in their scale. And so this giant bfg, manipulated by a team of puppeteers on stage, eventually arrives and enters into conversation with Sophie. However, there is subsequently a moment of transition when John returns as the human sized BFG and Sophie is then rendered with a small puppet. So when we see him as the human sized version, we see a smaller human to understand the difference. Basically, there are a few different levels of scale that we jump between. This medium version being used to convey the sense of other giants existing who arrive as giant giant puppets who are much bigger than than The BFG himself, he is sort of human sized compared to them when we see those characters portrayed by humans on stage. However, we have a small puppet version of the BFG and a teeny, tiny puppet version of Sophie. So there are three levels of scale that we are working with here, which absolutely has its pros and cons, with the biggest pro being the ability to shift our perspective within the narrative. There is a moment when the BFG has been captured, and we really want to connect to his humanity in this moment. And so in this scene, they have him portrayed by John with this duo of British soldiers who are imprisoning and interrogating him, being portrayed by small, silly puppets. By and large, though, I do think that over the course of the entire thing, it also inhibits our emotional connection to him a little bit. And what I liked a lot about Paddington, and they also did this in Pinocchio, was that we have the opportunity to see the Paddington performer connect with the puppet on stage. And the actor who voices Pinocchio at Shakespeare's Globe is also puppeteering Pinocchio the entire time as well. So a little bit of the issue I had with the BFG is there being very few moments in which we see any kind of a connection between John and the larger puppet, the one that we most think of as the bfg, because it's big. I should explain as well that when the big puppet version of the BFG is on stage, John is providing his line from offstage, so he is not part of the onstage puppeteering team, which was a slightly puzzling choice to me. There were some nice transformative transitions through these different scale moments. I do think the first arrival of the giant BFG puppet, which is pretty much just a torso and hands and a head on a giant stick held aloft in the sky, not unlike the little Amal puppet, with a little less detail and dexterity, perhaps. I do think that first arrival merited a little bit more of a theatrical reveal. It was maybe slightly underpowered, this sequence. At the end of the first act, however, this trogglehomper nightmare experienced by the Queen with all of these other giants arriving, that worked really well. There was a lot of payoff with that. Wait, did I call trogglehumper the drink earlier? Frobscottle is the drink, obviously. How could I be so foolish? Don't drink a Trogglehomper. That's. That's not gonna agree with you. I will also say the pacing of the entire thing. And again, family audience, like what works for kids. Kids was Relatively steady. I don't know that that actually is to the benefit of a child audience, like maybe a really young audience. But I think a lot of, like, maybe tweens would start to get a little bit bored in some of the slower moments. And a lot of the slowing down of the whole thing was as we gradually brought these giant puppets on and off stage. And it's curious to me that a set would be designed with these curtains in the midst of a sort of cutout proscenium, which would have to be lifted and lowered for the giants to make it through sort of just big enough gaps. Like if that's going to be a fixture of your storytelling, that you're going to have these enormous puppets, I feel like you want to make even more space for them to get on and off the stage. And the stage itself is a massive thrust stage in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which is challenging because there's only so much set that you can actually put on that space before you start to obscure sight lines. And I loved the design of the back wall and the cloth. I love this sort of visible brushstroke, painted blue aesthetic. The set having been designed by Vicky Mortimer, the costumes designed by Kenesha Isadore, which I also really enjoyed. Particularly the two jackets that the girls were wearing when they came out to have breakfast with the Queen at the end. Loved those. I did like the set pieces that we used. I don't know who necessarily was creatively responsible for the lit up fixtures of London that the BFG was racing past and leaping over at the beginning with some fantastic movement. Who was the movement director, director in here? I would have loved even more of this, actually. Choreographer and movement director Ira Mandela. Siobhan, definitely worth pointing out the illusion work from Chris Fisher. There were some great moments of people vanishing and then reappearing in unexpected places. The exact details of which I'm not about to spoil for you. And also, I'm not entirely sure how they did it. Zoe Spurr's lighting design, I thought, was really gorgeous. And I said that it's not a musical. It was a play with music. Because there were moments of music, music in the background. There was this stirring, emotional music as it became more dramatic in the second act. There were these ethereal sounds as we were first discovering the concept of dreams. These real tangible things that not only existed, but were literally flying around above our heads. That was a stunning visual effect. I thought it could have been even bigger, even more widespread. There was a dream that would sort of float down and float around and then disappear back up to the top levels of the theater. And I just wanted 20 more of them, them at once. I wanted it to be a real wow moment. And I just don't know that we really had that, that same sense of magic and wonder and impact. The compositions, I should point out, were the work of Olita Hafner with the sound design from Carolyn Downing, and it was live music as well. And like almost every other creative element of this show, it was characterful and it had an awful lot of charm. I feel like almost all of it could have been a little brighter, a little more colorful, a little more vivid, dare I say, a little more whimsical. Which brings me to my final thoughts about this production. Let's talk about.
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This company. Now there are multiple child actors in rotation. They were so brilliant and I want to make sure I tell you their names, the ones I saw this evening. Ellamy Shivers was starring as Sophie with so much of the show resting on her shoulders. Oh, maybe her name is pronounced Elmi, like E, L, L E, M I, E or Elemi. I apologize, I've given you three different options. I hope that one is correct. But a really fantastic young performer, one who got an awful lot of laughs with this dialogue and this sort of Matilda esque wisdom beyond her years. Some lovely interactions, especially later on with the bfg. By the time they've become closer to enough to feel like they're going to miss each other, she had one of the most winning moments of the entire evening when she said, I'm not scared. This isn't my first kidnapping. But the work not only that she does on stage, but also providing offstage dialogue while being represented on stage by a small puppet. Really fantastic and really highlighted what an expressive vocal actor she was as well. I think she's great, as was Maisie Lee, who played the other young role of Kimberly, her friend from the orphanage, whose return in the second act is perhaps a little bit inexplicable. But the whole thing is silly and fantastical and charming enough that nobody really minds. And she's another fun winning character as well because she is so steadfast in her convictions about the coin that she has with the Queen's face on it with this penny and that the Queen will have the answer and is a great person to turn to. Which brings us to the Queen herself. Like I said, very much feeling familiar of the late Queen Elizabeth II in this production, rather than a Queen Victoria ty hype, she was portrayed brilliantly by Helena Limbery. There was this real joy in the characterization of a Queen who is clearly discontent and who comes into her own and who utterly takes charge of a frenzied situation in the second act and who pushes past all of the men who have tried to keep her contained and even locked in a panic room. It's something of a spoiler for the ending, but the entire thing concludes concludes with these characters having breakfast together in Buckingham palace and a symphony of different fart sounds eventually involving the audience as well and being conducted and requested from various levels of the theatre by the Queen. So that's the kind of thing that we devolve into. And I think that concept more than anything else about this review is going to give you a sense of whether you would enjoy this production or not. Now it's a deceptively large company with some brilliant support, including from Philip Leibish and Luke Sumner as the characters of Captain Smith and Captain Frith. These are two British army men who are trying to keep the Queen desperately out of danger, but who are more than a little obstinate and who believe Sophie as well as the BFG to be international assassins in disguise. They are great comedy value though, particularly this running joke about one of them having such a plentiful mustache that he is basically impossible to understand. Understand. Finally, we have to talk about the BFG himself, but before we do, I want to give credit to the many puppeteers throughout the production who bring these different puppet characters to life. The BFG's head is puppeteered by Ben Thompson, his body by Sean McCourt, and the arms by Elisa De Grey and Oneoluwa Taiwo. Sophie as a puppet is puppeteered by Elsa Darling and Aiki Nakagawa, while the blood bottler that's the villainous giant is portrayed by Richard Riddle, with his head being puppeteered by Fred Davis, his body by Corey Mitchell, and his arms by Parky Abiratny and Sonja Cullingford. You get a sense just from that and how many different names are involved of the scale of puppetry and everything being achieved in this production, all of which I enjoyed. Fantastic puppetry work. And if you're a theater nerd going to see this, there's a lot that you can enjoy by just paying attention to the way that they manipulate things, like the way you puppeteer a giant has hand, but then get it to hold something. And it's so beautifully collaborative and cooperative to watch the way that they work together as this fantastic team. You can also entirely suspend disbelief and just watch this creature moving around because so convincingly do they breathe gorgeous theatrical life into it. As does the wonderful and deeply charming John Leader as the bfg. Now, I haven't seen other adaptations of the bfg, but he's almost always portrayed as much older. And it's sort of of this sweet, perhaps like surrogate grandfather kind of a relationship happening between Sophie and the bfg. John's BFG is much younger and has this youthful, childlike energy and innocence to him and this sense of naivety, which I thought was quite wonderful. His physicality in the introductory moments as he is leaping over London landmarks and buses and things was really quite remarkable. But it's his deliveries of all of the nonsense speech and these grammatically incorrect sentences that really wins you over. He is utterly endearing in this role. And just like the young actress playing Sophie, does a fantastic job of creating a vivid enough vocal characterization, even when he is off stage. You do long for him to be there perhaps the entire time. And I think a lot might change about this production to even just have him at the foot of the BFG puppet and then have movies moments where he emerges out from it and we see a small Sophie puppet, just some sort of transition to indicate to us that we're going into a different sense of scale. You could even then do something with a moment towards the end where the human sized version of him and the human sized version of Sophie finally connect. Don't get me wrong, the way that they manage to have her being held aloft by the big BFG puppet is very impressive. But I think that could be sort of nice and representative of this idea of the two of them coming together as friends and kids, kindred souls in spite of their size differences. And when all is said and done, that charming story still does shine through. And this remains a gorgeous theatrical offering for families to go and enjoy this festive season, particularly as a pantomime alternative. If you want something that is going to enchant children and first time young theater goers, perhaps, perhaps with the joys of what is possible to create on stage. It's actually quite inspiring to consider. Maybe there will be future puppetry designers or puppeteers or performers into movement and that kind of storytelling or lighting designers based on their experience of going to see a piece of theatre like this as a child. This is while not necessarily the most impactful Roald Dahl stage adaptation that we have ever seen, exactly the kind of theater that will inspire. I think the next generation of theatre makers kids will remember going to see a magical production like the bfg. So if you are considering going to see the production either at the RSC or a subsequent theatre near you, I encourage you to do so and make up your own mind. Then come right back here and let us all know what you thought in the comments section down below. If you've already seen it, share all of your thoughts and feelings. Thank you so much for listening to this review. Stay tuned for many more coming soon over the coming weeks as I attempt to review everything that I am seeing this festive season before the end of the year. Wish me luck. There's an awful lot of shows over the next week and a half. For now, I have been Mickey Jo and as always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a Stagey Day. For 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day.
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Are you a fantasy reader looking to cure your book hangover? Then welcome, welcome, welcome to the Fantasy Fangirls podcast. I'm Lexi, older sister and fantasy Lore nerd. And I'm Nicole, younger sister and romantic at hi heart and we love exploring these stories, worlds and characters well beyond the last page. Fantasy Fangirls is not your typical book. Deep Dive Podcast when we say deep dive, we mean deep Dive where every episode covers a stretch of chapters and is structured with five segments to easily follow along. We are currently deep Diving Quicksilver by Callie Hart in the lead up to its highly anticipated sequel Brimstone. We're so excited. We hope you join us as we travel through the Quicksilver to dive deep into literary and character analysis, theories, lore, themes and so much more.
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