MALORY TOWERS AT THE ARTS THEATRE
Cast of Emma Rice production
When Darrell, Mary-Lou and the girls of Malory Towers launch into a jazz-swing Charleston routine to Benny Goodman’s Sing Sing Sing not long after curtain-up it is clear this is Enid Blyton with a difference. High-energy, joyous and visually inventive, Emma Rice’s adaption of Blyton’s boarding school novels fizzes with excitement and creativity from scene one. Yet the heartfelt lessons about friendship, confronting injustice and the value of old-fashioned manners that the 1940s-set books hold dear are never lost
Our heroine at the outset is Darrell Rivers (Robyn Sinclair), the nervous new pupil on her way on a steam train to an enchanting spire-laden boarding school at the end of British peninsula. In the carriage she meets wise-cracking Alicia (Molly Cheesley) and imperious Sally (Bethany Wooding) and a spiky classmate Gwen (Anna Soden) whose petulance and spiteful antics will drive much of the drama in the Cornish countryside. Put-upon Mary-Lou (Eden Barrie) and musically gifted Irene (Stephanie Hockley) join the action with a marvellously realised mis-en-scene.
That setting will chime with Harry Potter fans but why not? It’s a great set-up to bring together unlikely friends and fierce adversaries in close quarters. Yet while Harry and Hermione can always turn to Dumbledore to restore order, adults are only dimly seen in this production (and men not all) with the voice of headmistress Miss Grayling (Sheila Hancock) heard only on a few important occasions. That makes Malory Towers grittier and maybe more daring than Rowling’s Hogwarts, with girls settling their differences without recourse to stern authority figures. The stakes are often high too, with genuine life-or-death peril marvellously dramatized thanks to some smart and striking animation at the end of the first act, culminating with an unforgettable ‘cliffhanger’ moment that lives long in the memory.
That moment of menacing danger is brilliantly realised with dazzling lighting design and bewitching video projection. It a clear crowd pleaser. But the Arts’ new creative team will also be quietly happy. It’s hard to imagine the old Arts Theatre, pre-refurb, staging anything so technically adventurous (lighting, video, sound – all superb) that Rice’s production exhibits so often; as ever, we’re watching bold and confident acting at the Arts but now, thanks to David and Susie Sainsbury’s £16 million gift, Cambridge’s flagship cultural venue can boast something to artistically match the West End.
Malory Towers shines, however, thanks to its outstanding ensemble cast, nailing close-part harmonies in the show’s preppy musical numbers, slick choreography, gags aplenty and emotional range. Sinclair’s loveable but hot-headed Darrell drives the first act, with the audience soon rooting for the feisty heroine so unfairly maligned. Barrie’s May-Lou brings vulnerability and physical comedy with Hockley’s musicality and impish humour adding strong back-up to the main players. Arriving late in the first act, Zoe West’s Bill also charms as the horse-wrangling outsider but the second half belongs to Anna Soden’s Gwen, Darrell’s antagonist and Mary-Lou’s tormentor. Though enjoyably mean, Gwen is always compelling, even when roaming the auditorium to find new co-conspirators. A sketchily drawn character in Blyton’s books – and the BBC children’s drama series – the conflicted Gwen moves centre stage by the end, giving the performance some wounded emotional heft. Soden’s performance is a masterclass – believably horrid from the start but hinting at a painful past that make us root for a redemptive arc that we know might not come. Either way, it was a joy.
A rapturous young audience lapped up the drama, while older viewers will enjoy the subtle nods to other great high schools of cinema and TV: Grease’s Rydell High, Back to the Future’s Hlll Valley High School and the tougher British notes of prime 1980s Grange Hill. California sunniness meets jolly hockey sticks via an inner-city comp – it’s a winning combination. But Rice’s production goes further: in the World Cup weeks when ‘Englishness’, identity and common values come under the microscope once again, through a largely male gaze, Malory Towers gives an astute perspective on these matters from the other 50 per cent.
Dismissed as staid or traditional for many years, Blyton’s Malory Towers stories continue to delight youthful audiences. This sassy fast-paced production – quietly radical, moral but never preachy or over-wrought, and delivered with verve by a super-talented cast- captures why exactly today’s teenagers continue to turn these tales. A must-see.
Malory Towers review – Jack Grove
