Under Nicholas Hytner, the National
Theatre has developed a strong reputation for not-quite-alternative
Christmas productions: shows which are neither pantomimic nor
self-consciously subversive, but which celebrate the seasonal virtues
in a secular way without tinsel or artificial snow. It was not an
obvious decision to give this year’s such show to Bijan Sheibani, whose
recent directorial record at the NT has been erratic: for every triumph
like Wesker’s
The Kitchen
there has also been a
Damned By
Despair, the kind of production that makes “interesting” such a
notorious euphemism. However, Sheibani is on top form with this
adaptation of Erich Kästner’s 1928 novel in which a small-town boy
visiting Berlin almost inadvertently recruits a gang of young
“detectives” to track down the man who stole the money he was due to
give his grandmother.
Carl Miller has a long and honourable record as a writer and adapter of
plays for young people, and he and Sheibani work fluently with this
material, including bits of boisterous action (a chase through the
auditorium, a “Tinkerbell” moment at which we all literally stand up in
support of Emil) but without ever condescending or watering down the
urban realism which made Kästner’s book so radical on its publication.
The young detectives track Mr Snow through the identifiable streets of
Berlin’s Schöneberg and make their own trenchant observations about the
politics and economics of the city at that time. It’s an exhilarating
cross between Fritz Lang’s
M
and the Famous Five. Bunny Christie’s design is that of a
black-and-white Expressionist action film, all crazy angles and rows of
what could be both apartment windows and film sprocket holes; the video
projections are sometimes reminiscent of animator of that period Oskar
Fischinger.
My companion wondered why there were so few children in the press-night
audience. It turned out they were all onstage. Sheibani has marshalled
three teams of 50 children each (designated, delightfully, teams Drew,
Marple and Sherlock) together with some excellent principals: among the
group I saw were Ethan Hammer as an upright Emil, Georgie Farmer as
wide-boy Toots and Izzy Lee virtually defining the word “feisty” as
Pony the Hat. As the villainous grown-up Snow, Stuart McQuarrie even
grouses at the rear stalls as he is led out through the back of the
auditorium. Other Christmas show may license us to be child
ish; this is gloriously, and
properly precociously, child
like.
Written for the Financial
Times.