Pegasus Theatre is a beautiful space which offered a fantastically warm welcome to this family Christmas show. There was a beautifully designed fairytale treasure trail throughout the front of house spaces, a live band playing during the interval (selected shows), friendly staff – many of whom are clearly young people involved in the life of the theatre – and a clearly very happy and chatty audience of all ages.
The trip was worth it for the vibrant and festive atmosphere alone – andGrimm and Grimmer was a likeable, funny but underdeveloped show. It had a basic ‘adventure’ storyline in which the Grimm brothers’ sister Lotte travels to the fairytale kingdom in order to find the evil Rumpelstiltskin and free her brother from a Faustian pact whereby he forfeits his heart in exchange for all the fairytales in the world. At midnight tomorrow. While Lotte (Lauren Silver) is travelling through a rather sparsely evoked ‘kingdom’, then, her co-actors are free to appear as a range of fairytale characters – though they are either bizarre reimaginings of typical Grimm characters, or brand new ones altogether. Some of these work better than others – the American-Jewish king and queen, the mime prince, and the wolf-grandmother are very funny, while some zombie cannibal characters are just plain gruesome and a court jester character gets a bit boring. The fairy kingdom element of the show is thus rather patchy, and more a series of comedy sketches of varying quality than a suspenseful story with joined-up thinking behind it. Why reinvent such lauded and successful characters? Why don’t we learn more about the Grimm brothers and their pact with Rumpelstiltskin? What on earth was the bear character with the bourbon biscuits all about? These are some questions that were not sufficiently explored.
The show is very much a devised piece and Gonzo Moose’s strength at comedy improvisation comes through – although some opportunities to interact with a very energetic and engaged young audience were missed. With greater confidence in their abilities and further R&D in the early stages this could have been a winning show but at the moment it lacks depth.