EverAfter: A Mixed Up Fairytale – Chickenshed Theatre

EverAfter: A Mixed Up Fairytale continues at the Chickenshed Theatre, London.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

The Brothers Grimm are trying to write stories but their characters keep escaping and getting mixed up. There are four brothers, one of whom (Lauren Cambridge) is female. Cue for witty, topical comments about gender constructs and patriarchal assumptions.

So where do the fairytale characters go? The overarching narrative is Hansel and Gretel. They are lost so their botanist father (Ashley Driver) is on a quest to find them despite the machinations of, for example, Rumpelstiltskin (Michael Bossisse) and the Queen (Gemilla Shamruk), mother of the dancing princesses.

Chickenshed doesn’t believe in doing things by halves. A cast of 800 young people – yes, 800 (but not all at once) – and 23 adults demonstrate, yet again, just what this famously diverse, inclusive theatre company can do, even when their work has been pandemic-curtailed for much of this year.

Bossisse is statuesque, astonishingly adept on his stilts and has a magnificent basso profundo singing voice. He also has a good line in sounding very plausible when of course his character is up to no good at all.

Bethany Hamlin as Hansel and Gretel’s stepmother/witch has oodles of stage presence – lots of flounce and venom – and she sings beautifully.

And all this is integrally signed often – lovely touch – by having a specific signer linked to an individual character so that she or he becomes a sort of alter ego.

Another Chickenshed trademark is to give short single verse solos to lots of children – as well as the adult big numbers –  so we see a lot of talent and teamwork as the show proceeds.

Twelve staff members and 11 students or trainees appear in every performance. The children work in four rotas and I saw the Green Rota in action.

The best moments in EverAfter are when the stage fills up with them, immaculate, dynamic choreography ensuring that they form groups, shapes and rhythms like a professional army.

Some of the children have special needs of various sorts and it’s a lump-in-the-throat joy to see the slick way they are involved, supported and fully included.

Even the curtain call is a work of art with over 200 people on stage – and I’m told that backstage discipline, always good, is now calmer and better organised than ever because there’s a one way system which everyone adheres to.

Professionalism at its best.

Susan Elkin