'The Selfish Giant' at the Vaudeville Theatre

Last night we went to see a new production of 'The Selfish Giant' as part of the Oscar Wilde season ate the Vaudeville Theatre. It's described as a 'folk opera' by Guy Chambers with no dialogue but lots of songs to tell the story. It's a short show, only one hour and ten minutes, and there's only five shows so, as completists, we were lucky to see it. The Wilde season has announced al the main productions but the shorter 'entertainments' between the main plays seem to be announced only shortly before they're performed.

The story is quite straightforward and reasonably well known so it all comes down the telling to keep the attention and make it interesting. We have children playing in a garden with the best trees to climb, the brightest flowers and the most tasty fruits and the garden belongs to a giant. When the giant comes home from his extended visit to a friend he finds all the children in his garden and chases them off, then builds a wall to keep them out. That's when winter appears and doesn't go again until the children find a way back into the garden and the giant looks out to see that, finally, spring has arrived and he sees the error of his ways. When he goes into the garden the children run away but je finds one boy trying to climb into a tree and he helps him up before demolishing the wall and inviting the children into his garden which is now theirs. Many years later the boy returns with wounds in his hands and feet and the giant grows angry that someone dared to hurt the boy. The boy invites the giant to visit his own garden and, later that day, the giant is found dead in his garden. Cue big song.

The staging was very simple, with the band at the back of the stage and various ladders in the front half acting as trees. Different coloured balloons appeared now and then (only white balloons in winter), some white sheets to cover the ladders in winter and lots of cardboard storage boxes with yet more balloons inside. And a chair. I've seen ladders as trees a few too many times but it worked out ok.

The young cast were dressed as we've come to expect children to be dressed since 'Play Away' was on telly in the early '70s in bright colours and baggy ill-fitting clothes. It would be nice if someone could come up with a different way of dressing young adults as children some time.  They had nice enough stage voices but it was difficult for anyone to really stand out since most (or all?) of the songs involved several singers singing together. I did notice Izuka Hoyle as one of the narrators and her voice sounded nice and smooth.

The giant, on the other hand, couldn't be missed by using his bassest of bass voices. How can anyone sing that low and sustain over a whole series of songs? Well done Jeff Nicholson on sustaining that voice and managing those enormous platform shoes.

I enjoyed it well enough and I liked the little production touches such as giving random members of the audience little lights to switch on at two points in the show - I gave mine back at the end like a good little audience member. I suspect the show needs to play for a bit longer than this short run and then Guy Chambers can get out his editing pen to tighten it up a bit and get in some more hooks. Having said that, I'd be happy to see it again in future.