This clever show opens with a travelling players’ cart on stage, all four sides have shiny red curtains lined in gold. On it are all the props, in theatrical trunks and baskets, and the three performers, who are playing music and will step down onto the stage to sing, dance and act – and use the cart to change costume and characters.
This is how Shakespeare’s men travelled the land. The Ancient Greeks also had these theatres on wheels. Love a bit of homage to theatrical history.
A Tiger’s Tale, written by Mike Kenny and based on a true story, is an hour of delight. It’s beautifully sung, expertly performed, adroitly choreographed, and charmingly told. There is enough visual humour and subtlety to engage all ages. You believe every moment of the tale.
A cast of three create the world of “an ordinary family” who have an extraordinary story to tell. Ma, Pa, and their daughter Titch live in a village. (Most likely in Yorkshire). Pa is a window cleaner.
He’s not a very good one – but he does have amazing skills with a ladder. When this is pointed out to him, the family discovers that they all have a talent for balance. They get hired to join a circus.
The props that have just created the family’s home – where they have tea, which is very important to all children’s stories you can’t help but notice– now create a glittering circus tent where the family perform acrobatics.
The complication (and as they explain, all stories must have one because it’s not a proper story if everything goes smoothly) is that Titch (Kat Johns-Burke who is an absolute delight – an actor you simply want to see on stage in just everything), Titch falls in love with a baby tiger and insists that the family adopt it.
Which as Ma and Pa (Nicola Jayne Ingram and circus performer Owen Gaynor) point out, is going to get difficult when the baby tiger grows to full size. This is especially when the family decides to go back home to England, where tigers are not yet fully accepted as a fireside pet.
Directed by Gilly Baskeyfield, choreographed by TC Howard with music by James Atherton, this is a lovely family show with plenty of humour – presented with great panache.
A Tiger’s Tale is at Cambridge Junction until Friday, December 13. See: www.m6theatre.co.uk
