AFTER a winter tour of schools, writer and artistic director Paul Birch’s first play since taking the reins of Riding Lights Theatre Company heads home to Friargate Theatre for its finale.
Billed as “an alternative, unusual way into the Nativity story”, this one-hour play for family audiences is rooted in the transformative power of storytelling, delivered with Birch’s trademark comedy plus puppetry aplenty.
CharlesHutchPress attended Saturday morning’s show, when understudy Claire Morley took the role of Cracker the dog’s puppeteer and grouchy farmer Mrs McGinty opposite Grace Hussey-Burd’s “world-famous” storyteller Ebenezer Sneezer.
For the 1pm performance, York actress Morley would be switching to Ebenezer, accompanied by Holly Cassidy in the other roles. “My head is full of words,” she said of the task ahead.
And “full of words” aptly sums up Birch’s playful play, where description and detailed plot progression play a stronger hand than visual, magical wonder under Erin Burbridge’s direction, although a somewhat incongruous climactic bout of fisticuffs with accompanying sound effects hits a physically comical note, as do the sporadic interjections of a “turbulent turkey”.
Hussey-Burd’s Ebenezer, in top hat, tails and multi-coloured waistcoat, is lost at the start, snow in her silver boots, and motley-looking mutt Cracker, her chatterbox canine companion, by her side, head bursting with strange ideas about Christmas, always offering an unpredictable, often cheeky word in the ear like Basil Brush.
Without permission, as the shed doors open out like the inside of Dr Who’s Tardis, they take shelter in Mrs McGinty’s barn. On the wall is a No Singing sign, last seen in York in Shaun Collinge’s long reign as landlord at The Maltings, in Tanner’s Moat, (newly transformed into the Irish pub The Dubliner, replete with live music, by the way).
Mrs McGinty is as grumpy as that other Ebenezer on a winter’s night, Scrooge, but gradually we learn why in a Birch story that champions “the importance of love, the importance of perseverance”, while highlighting the dangers of misinformation, disinformation and misunderstanding.
In doing so, as Birch seeks to “make sense of the world, not by providing answers, but by seeing new opportunities through new ideas”, he passes topical comment on a pernicious planet quick to judge and misjudge, especially on social media. One that puts the extreme into X streams of abuse, for example.
Ebenezer and Cracker will be allowed to stay if the nimble story-spinner can warm flinty Mrs McGinty’s frozen heart with the glad tidings of a tremendous tale. If not, they will be booted back out into the storm.
Mrs McGinty has an even more crotchety fellow villain of the piece in Deadly the dastardly donkey, who puts the unstable in the stable, with a pronounced aversion to festive comfort and joy. Again, do not judge a book by its cover, however, as Mrs McGinty turns storyteller with revelations of her past and Deadly’s too.
Wrapped inside is the story of the Nativity – Riding Lights is a Christian theatre company – and Birch has certainly found an alternative way to tell it, perhaps a tad too complex to sustain the full concentration of the four-year-olds in the audience, but engagingly, entertainingly and energetically told by Hussey-Burd and Morley.
Riding Lights Theatre Company in A Christmas Cracker, Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York, at 11am, 1.30pm and 6pm, today; 11am, 1.30pm and 4pm, tomorrow. Box office: 01904 655317 or ridinglights.org/achristmascracker.