‘Part social realism, part science fiction, with a healthy dose of dystopia’ – 1927’s new show Please Right Back is not quite what it first seems to be, as Dorothy Max Prior discovers at the Edinburgh International Festival 2024
We enter the auditorium to see a whole-stage projection across three screens, monochrome op-art style graphics, and to each side of the stage, a young person dressed in a contemporary take on a Pierrot costume, decorated with letters of the alphabet, each wearing a dunce’s hat upon their head. (These and other fabulous costumes for this production are by 1927’s regular designer Sarah Munro.) As we find our seats, the two leave their posts and follow some of us. If you have the gall to turn and stare them out, you are rewarded with a pencil. I get a pencil…
The pair remind me rather of the terrible twins in 1927’s first production, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a Total Theatre Award winning show that took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm many moons ago. Since then, the company have flown to great heights, staging theatre shows and operas across the globe. And here we are, ready and waiting for the Scottish premiere of their new show, Please Right Back, at the Edinburgh International Festival 2024.
Once we’re all seated, it’s lift-off time – and we are whirled into a typical 1927 multi-coloured extravaganza merging Suzanne Andrade’s witty storytelling with the usual gorgeous film and animation work of Paul Barritt. There are fabulous shapeshifting performances by the cast of four (Chardae Phillips, Jenny Wills, Lara Cowin, and Stefan Davis) who work their magic alongside and inside Paul’s superb visual design.
There’s plenty of razz-a-ma-tazz from this all-singing all-dancing cast. We are presented with a tall tale featuring a stolen briefcase, a talking lion, a boxing kangaroo, and pirates stranded inside a whale. The narrative is built around a series of letters between an absent father and his daughter, Kim. The errant dad, known only as Mr E, (played with great gusto by Stefan Davis) is apparently having all sorts of marvellous adventures in the world (depicted in glorious technicolour), whilst his children, Kim and her little brother Davey, a pair of feisty working-class kids, are having a bit of a tough time on their monochrome-toned run-down estate, what with the piles of rubbish, wild dogs, annoying neighbour Raymond, and exhausted mum Dee who is trying to make ends meet. Plus, there is this enormously annoying woman who keeps turning up at their doorstep to ‘support the family’ – which would seem to mean offering unsolicited advice on matters she fails to understand.
‘We all miss you’ writes Kim to her dad. ‘Please right back.’
I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say that it turns out that the children’s father is not adventuring in fabulous faraway lands of spies and pirates – he’s in prison. So the show turns out to be poignantly and wittily exploring the knock-on effects of prison sentences on offenders’ families, and is apparently based on Suzanne’s own life story.
Kim is played by a real live actor (Chardae Phillips) who like everyone else in the cast brilliantly multi-tasks as whatever other characters are needed in scenes her lead character is not in. Her little brother Davey is a cartoon character – although after a while we completely believe in him as a real person. As is always the case with 1927 shows, the interaction between real flesh-and-blood people and animated sets and characters is phenomenally skilled. Kim’s scenes at school, where she is bullied, and hit on by the school’s bad-girl Goth Stacey, who tries to bring her over to the dark side, are really lovely.
The script is, as you’d expect from Suzanne Andrade, full of witticisms and barbs – lots of digs at the way working class families in general and families of prisoners in particular are treated, and lots of criticism of the British education system. But the show, which is in very early days, is currently a little baggy in the middle, and occasionally slightly too ernest and preachy. The mid section could do with trimming a little (although how that happens when you have minutely choreographed every scene to tie in with the animation, I don’t know). In particular, there is rather too much of the annoying ‘care in the community’ lady. We soon get the point, and really don’t need it rammed home. Once we get the revelation that Mr E is in jail, it all slumps a bit and can feel a little over-egged in some scenes. But it picks up again, and we are treated to a fabulous resolution and ending, as the glorious multi-coloured fantasy world and real-life monochrome experience are pulled together with panache.
As 1927 aficionados will have noted, none of the original company members are onstage. Suzanne is writer and director, with Esme Appleton co-directing. Paul is, as ever, behind the scenes. And – sadly, I feel – the company’s original composer and performing musician Lilian Henley is not involved with this production. Laurence Owen is a very competent sound designer (he worked on previous 1927 show Golem) but in that case it was in tandem with composer Lilian Henley, who has such a unique touch that she is very much missed. The music in this production is good enough – mostly being pastiche film noir or Disney or Latin jazz or whatever else is being referenced in the narrative, with the occasional musical-theatre number popping up. It does feels a little ordinary, coming after the fabulous musical experimentation of the company’s last show, Roots. But the musical style is all in keeping with the Hollywood-esque mood of the fantasy scenes, which I presume is the point.
After the short-story format of that previous show, it is good to see 1927 return to a full-length narrative, as with The Animals and Children Took to the Streets and Golem. It’s not quite up to the giddy heights of those two shows yet, but it is early days for Please Right Back.
It’s touring later in 2024, and I look forward to seeing it again once it has bedded in. In the meantime – bravo, 1927. Creating a complex show of this sort is no mean feat, and despite some criticism, I really enjoyed the show. It most definitely has legs (all the better to high-kick with). Jazz hands at the ready!
1927: Please Right Back played 2-11 August 2024 at The Studio, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. www.eif.co.uk
Featured image (top) and all other l images: 1927: Please Right Back courtesy of the company / EIF