Review: WE WILD THINGS, Old Red Lion Theatre
Photo credit: Jamie McNaught
It is always a challenge to take established literary characters and try to imagine their lives long after the original writer is no longer around to advise. This is the approach writer Caroline Lezny has taken with We Wild Things, her feminist love letter to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, written for Shakefest as part of the Camden Fringe.
Lezny has taken inspiration from two of The Tempest’s featured characters, Miranda and Caliban, and reimagined them as Mira and Cal. Across 75 minutes, we jump between the pair’s initial time on the mysterious island and an imagined reunion a decade later, when Mira returns in search of a hidden book, which presumably refers to the buried book of spells from the original story.
To justify revisiting classic characters, especially by placing them back in their original setting, requires a strong narrative pull to convincingly take the audience along. Lezny’s writing is, without doubt, beautifully composed and poetic. She instils Mira with great storytelling ability as she paints wonderfully vivid pictures of the outside world, which Cal has never seen and understands very little of. Unfortunately, her motives for returning to the island feel confused, seemingly shifting between the search for the mysterious book and then forgotten in favour of a desire to save Cal from this world. The plot, while an enticing concept, feels muddled in its timelines and needs clearer definition. At times, it is also repetitive and lacks a clear destination.
Kathryn Snowe injects Mira with a feisty, independent spirit, while simultaneously revealing a naïve, vulnerable flicker that is always peeking through her bravado. She has wonderful chemistry with Ulysses Wells as Cal, whom she describes as “the boy I knew in a patchwork suit”; a pinstriped affair now held together with washed-up recyclables, a nod to the island’s deterioration in an ever-changing climate. Wells is wonderfully wide-eyed and curious, giving an excellent physical performance as he hunches and lumbers around the small space of the Old Red Lion Theatre, innocent and menacing in equally unpredictable measure.
Director Chloe Cattin uses the small space to its fullest, littering it with metal drums and props hanging from chains, while the poetic dialogue paints the natural beauty of the setting. Simple lighting and soft music draw us into the fable-like world her actors gleefully inhabit. The sudden bang of a drum or yelp of anguish echoes through the space to dramatic effect.
On the night of viewing, the room was so intensely hot that you could quite easily believe we were all on a remote desert island. The actors persevered admirably in what must have been challenging conditions.
We Wild Things deserves credit for its ambition and poetic approach to reuniting Mira and Cal, but it becomes a little muddled on the path to true love.
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Phil Meikle
