The Twelve Dancing Princesses by Strongbox Theatre, Ellen Terry Theatre at Coventry University, January 22.
THIS sumptuous, exuberant and hugely enjoyable performance from Strongbox Theatre is a wonderful tale well told.
It is stylish, funny and heart-warming. It’s a fairly well-known fairy tale concerning 12 sisters who dance all night and refuse to sleep. Needless to say, this means they are exhausted each morning.
Their father, in true fairy tale style, offers a reward to the person who finds out where they go. The successful contender’s reward for success in the usual - the hand in marriage - but he goes one step further and demands the other 11 sisters for his 11 brothers – a boorish bunch, graceless and ungrateful, who meet their comeuppance by a range of intriguing methods.
The sisters’ misery in marriage leads to murderous thoughts and finally actions. Six husbands are dead, one blinded, one runs away and two more become musicians in the Broken Hearted Band which provided wonderfully atmospheric music throughout – very rhythmic which suits the choreographed style of the piece.
Six actors play the 12 sisters – and also the brothers in a drama that outlines how they relieved themselves of their husbands one by one. Wonderfully watchable, stylistically elegant – particularly gripping are the first few minutes as the singer uncovers her sisters who introduce themselves one by one from under muslin cloths.
This production is from a relatively new theatre company made up of Coventry University performing arts graduates and their next performance may well be at the prestigious National Student Drama Festival – they certainly deserve to do well.
Jane Howard
I think the Ellen Terry Building is what most us once knew as the Gaumont or Odeon, depending on age.
