THE SELFISH GIANT at the Vaudeville - a Chambers piece...

Constant Reader, you will remember that I have made a few trips to the Vaudeville Theatre recently as this is where Dominic Dromgoole's Classic Spring Theatre Company are staging their year-long Oscar Wilde season.  So far they have all been enjoyable productions, I guess they are forgiven the eventual miss-step.

THE SELFISH GIANT is billed as a folk opera but I think that might be pitching it a bit high.  It seemed more like a glorified schools production.  The cast certainly put their all into it but I found it all rather unmemorable.

Unlike his plays that are leavened by his epigrams and memorable characters, Oscar Wilde's fairy tales hit you with the high-minded, moralistic tone of his Victorian times.  THE SELFISH GIANT is no different.

A Giant owns a lovely garden which is used by a group of school children in his absence.  But when he returns, he is angry that they play there so he builds a wall around it, his actions resulting in the garden being visited by a long cold Winter.  The children manage to get through the wall but run away when the giant reappears, all but a boy trying to climb a tree so the giant helps him up into the branches and tells the children they can play there anytime.  The wall is knocked down, bringing the return of Spring.

He is saddened that in the following years he never sees the boy he helped climb the tree again until, late in his life, he finds the boy under a new tree.  The boy has stigmata on his hands and feet and says to the giant that as he once let the boy play in his garden, the giant can play in his garden in Paradise.  The Giant dies happily....

Bill Buckhurst's production is all very bright and bouncy on a set of step-ladders and balloons, with cardboard archive boxes used as the wall.  The cast of eight who play the children are all very 'up' and grinning while Jeff Nicholson as The Giant stomped about looking glum and singing - a little unsteadily - in a deep bass voice.

Guy Chambers was playing the piano in the onstage band and seemed happy with the response from an audience who I suspect were mostly friends of the cast.  We were given little pen lights going into the auditorium to help give the show a starry night, which was fun.

So there we go, at only 70-odd minutes it hardly outstayed it's welcome but it was all a bit school-play for me... if they could find some genuine pain or pathos in it, it might make more of a lasting impact.