My Mother Told Me Not to Stare Reviews
“This show is really something special and unexpected!”
A F Harold, www.getwokingham.co.uk, on My Mother Told Me Not to Stare, 12/04/2010
It’s a real pleasure to see a show aimed at children that is neither simple or easy; that isn’t a spin-off from a TV show or cartoon or staging of a popular book; that isn’t just slapstick and fart jokes – although there is nothing necessarily bad about any of those, just that this show is really something special and unexpected.
My Mother Told Me Not to Stare is an opera from Theatre Hullabloo, composed by Martyn Harry (fellow of music at St Anne’s and St. Hilda’s colleges in Oxford) to a book and libretto by Irish-Australian playwrite Finegan Kruckemeyer, and it is decidedly contemporary in its soundscape.
The story is part Tim Burton, part Mervyn Peake, part Grimm Brothers and part straightforward run-of-the-mill Gothic horror, with a healthy pinch of Shock-Headed Peter sprinkled on top, like seasoned shepherd on the crust of a shepherd pie.
There is a sort of friendly narrator figure who leads us through: he’s pointy toed and shock-haired like the scissor man, but he seems to be on our side. He speaks and sings and points things out to us and the story is something like this...
A boy, Bobby Rogers, grows up in a dark little town to a pair of miserable cobblers (who had a child because his small hands could do the fiddly work they’d grown too old to manage). Every morning all the children of the town are paraded to the town square where they recite The List: a lengthy litany of ‘My Mother told me not to...’ which ends with the threat that were any child to break a rule on purpose ‘...they would cease to be a child’.
Bobby has one friend, who he meets every Sunday – his day off work – a girl called Emily Ives, who he’s secretly in love with. When children start disappearing (after breaking the rules) they devise a plan to discover what’s going on. Bobby sits up a tree with a net, while Emily stands underneath ready to break a rule. But instead of catching whoever it is that’s stealing the children away, Bobby finds that Emily simply vanishes... and thus ends the first act.
The second act sees Bobby find his way to The Fixing Kitchen, where the naughty children are taken to be ‘mended’, under the caring and careful eye of the witch-like Nurse (think Nurse Ratched caring for babies). Although the resolution isn’t exactly happy, Bobby does save the day, and the opera ends years later with the possibility of Emily and Bobby meeting up again.
The whole atmosphere is dark and weird, and the mix of live action and projection (animation and shadow-puppetry), of live music and pre-recorded music, of narration and singing, of the slightly sloping stage and the coiling wire tree from which the stolen children’s likenesses are hung make the whole show somewhat queasy, like being at sea, like being uncertain.
Beside the real actors there are a variety of puppets, from life size ones down to little dolls, all with a pallid grey skin and strange look to them, and added to them are the dolls that float around the edge of the landscape in glass bulbs, like Victorian belljars in a dusty anatomist’s front room. And the eeriness is compounded by the projections that play behind, like clips of German expressionist cinema, with repeated disembodied eye motifs, made more resonant now by Stephen Moffat’s use of the same giant eye for Matt Smith’s premiere episode as the Doctor.
For the most part the music is shrieking, fearsome and fearful, little repeated patterns and harsh chords, with patches of, if not sunlight, then at least a cold-lighted warmth breaking through. The sudden intrusion into the picture of operatic singing is shocking (not in the sense of being a surprise, per se, since this is an opera, but in the true sense of the word) – it’s simply outside the normal, beyond the fringe of what’s normally seen on a children’s stage. It makes the words difficult to follow, one leans forward to understand, to follow the melismas, to peer closer at these figures made inhuman by the sounds they make. It’s hugely effective, and strangely beautiful.
The whole cast perform wonderfully, which is what you expect from a company like this, but to do so to an audience of, maybe, slightly less than a dozen, on a Friday afternoon is a testament to the ethic that shines through the dark off this work.
A haunting and gripping tale, that is funny and moving, and probably a unique experience for many kids. It’s easy to understand why a score like this, in this style, might not be everyone’s cup of tea, it’s most decidedly not easy listening, but children are not as narrow-minded as is sometimes believed and if they could just be tempted to try this parents might be surprised at the results. Those that were there on this balmy afternoon soon fell under the show’s spell and won’t soon forget it (or sleep at night).
“It was all very funny and surreal and interesting”
Eloise Leach age 7, www.bachtrack.com, on My Mother Told Me Not to Stare, 22/03/2010
We went to the Unicorn Theatre on London’s South Bank on Saturday to see ‘My Mother Told Me Not to Stare’, which was a production by Hullabaloo. The Hullabaloo is a company from the North of England who offer opera suitable for children.
The theatre was very little and it was full. The stage was very low because it was just the ground with lots of rocks on to make it interesting. I didn’t think it looked very exciting to begin with.
Then, when the lights went off a bizarre man walked in, he looked very strange with short curly grey hair and unusual clothes. He looked into a big glass bowl with a model village in it. He started to sing a story about some of the things that happened in the village. The song sounded beautiful with such high and low notes. I’m used to listening to rock music so this was something very different for me and it made an immediate impression on me. The story was about a boy, Bobby Rogers, who loved a girl in the village called Emily Ives. If children did not follow the rules in this village they would disappear. The narrator appeared many times to sing their tale.
Puppets and shadow projection were also used to tell the story and add to the plot. There were only 5 people in the whole production. Bobby and Emily were people. Bobby’s parents were life size puppets. All the babies were dolls and the other children were puppets. Apart from the baby dolls all the puppets were controlled differently and looked like their characters personality. Even the real people wore masks sometimes! The round screen in the background showed scenery, and backgrounds and sometimes important parts of the story! It was all very funny and surreal and interesting.
The costumes were just ordinary clothes; just like the clothes you would wear everyday, nothing exciting. But the narrator looked very different he wore a costume a bit like Johnny Depp in ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
The entire story was told in a song, but that didn’t make it difficult to follow. The song put more expression into the words and added more meaning to the tale, helping you to understand it more.
It was a very happy ending for Bobby and Emily, who stopped the baddie and fell in love again. When I came out of the theatre I felt happy that I’d seen it because it made me feel very good.
“My Mother Told Me Not to Stare isn’t really like anything else”
Gary Naylor, Broadwayworld.com Reviews, on My Mother Told Me Not to Stare, 21/03/2010
Almost a hundred years ago, Russian formalist Vladimir Propp analysed folk tales into irreducible elements of plotting and characters. I was grateful for my rudimentary understanding of his work as Finegan Kruckemeyer's story and Martyn Harry's music were fused into Theatre Hullabaloo and Action Transport Theatre extraordinary operetta for children, "My Mother told me not to stare". With a plot that presents such familiar devices as neglectful parents, unrequited love and exile as punishment for rule-breaking, the audience can hang on to something familiar as everything else spins wildly out to the more distant reaches of what theatre can do.
Tom Bates, bewigged in the style of Hugh Laurie's George from Blackadder the Third, acts as a narrator and starts conventionally, but is soon using his soaring counter-tenor voice to sing his lines as other members of the cast play the strange, dissonant, but ultimately beautiful music that underlines the operetta's tension to a sometimes almost unbearable pitch. Before long, lifesize puppets are singing, projections of characters are appearing on the circular screen at the back of the stage and children are chanting rules in the Town Square and disappearing when guilty of the pettiest of infractions.
Director Nina Hajiyianni has assembled a multi-talented cast and is ambitious enough to push even their talents to the limit. Andrew Sparling (clarinet and baritone) conveys the horror of a lost son in a hideously beautiful lament sung with Eleanor Meynell (soprano and piano), whom we see later as a grotesque, masked nurse in the terrifying Fixing Kitchen. Ms Meynell's piano is a delight that weaves in and out of the play, providing a musical illustration of the hopes and fears of the children. As the two thwarted lovers, Gary Albert Hughes (flute and tenor) and Eva Karell (violin and soprano), give intense performances, full of desire and pain. Mr Hughes' Bobby contorts his angular body, as Bobby's mind twists and turns, wrestling with his conditioning to obey absurd rules and his growing understanding that right and wrong are not determined by compliance with what others demand, but in understanding what right and wrong really mean. Ms Karell, only recently graduated from the Royal College of Music, shows real star quality as the feisty Emily who leads Bobby to adulthood. Ms Karell, a Swede who has performed in Germany and the UK, is a performer of whom we will hear much in the future.
The plot has echoes of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and the design elements of Tim Burton's aesthetic, but "My Mother told me not to stare" isn't really like anything else. Children can enjoy it, but this operetta is really for anyone who wishes to explore what theatre can do in 2010. You can catch this extraordinary production on tour now and in festivals throughout the summer.
“This stretches the boundaries of children’s theatre in a darkly entertaining, absurd tour de force”
Katherine Kirwin, www.thepublicreviews.com, on My Mother Told Me Not to Stare, 13/03/2010
My Mother Told Me Not To Stare (MMTMNTS) is a gothic, puppet performance for children and adults alike, told in an operetta style. This production stretches the boundaries of what can be called children’s theatre in a darkly entertaining, absurd tour de force.
MMTMNTS presents a world of Upper Crumble where children are instructed a set of strict rules which must be obeyed, all of which seem to be inspired by the old wife’s tales we have all grown up with – ‘never stare’ ‘never swallow the pips of your fruit’. If these rules are broken on purpose by the children then they disappear, mysteriously and ominously. Imagine a lump of Road Dahl’s dark humour, mixed with Tim Burton’s aesthetic style and a dash of Sweeney Todd, and that gives you an idea of this production.
The storyline of the piece followed the development of Bobby Rogers as he grows from a boy to a man, losing his friend because she broke the rules, challenging ‘The List’ and learning that it is better to do something good because it’s good than because something bad will happen. The physical performance by Gary Hughes as Bobby Rogers was captivating as his awkward, exaggerated body grew into the strong physicality of a man.
The action is fantastically presented by the narration of The Man, confidently performed by Tom Bates, as a British Willy Wonka-esque guide to this dark world, speaking in a lyrical manner which blends almost seamlessly between spoken narration and song. Each of the actors in this company is frighteningly talented; not just as actors, but singers, musicians and puppeteers. The puppets were my favourite aspect ranging from a miniature girl puppet with a mini rubber ring to a giant head of a talkative child, to the full body puppets of the grown-up characters. They were very well integrated into the piece and used to comedic as well as dramatic effect.
There were flaws in this performance in terms of the intensity of the music and enunciation at points, the second half was less engaging than the first, however I cannot help but focus on the positive elements and applaud the efforts of Hullabaloo and Action Transport Theatre. Opera is often perceived to be an elitist art-form, an acquired taste, but if we fail to introduce young people to opera then there will be a whole generation who become excluded from a potentially rich art-form. This production is making a feisty, concerned effort to create an operetta that speaks to young people’s concerns yet engages the adults accompanying them. As I left I overhead someone say that it was ‘very challenging’ and that’s exactly the direction in which young people’s theatre should be moving.
“A Brave attempt to make what is essentially high art available to children”
Nick Turner, The Cumberland News, on My Mother Told Me Not To Stare, 25/02/2010
FILM projections, puppetry and live music performed by the cast created an innovative and challenging gothic operetta.
The story that unfolded was disturbing and engaging in equal measure and encouraged my two children to persevere with the operatic singing (a few whispered explanations from me also helped).
The talented cast combined their singing, acting and puppetry skills to show how “naughty” children who disobeyed the rules of a town called Upper Crumble vanished without trace. We learned that they were taken to the sinister “fixing kitchen” where they were recycled back into babies for new parents.
Tom Bates injected some dark humour as a narrator who could have stepped straight out of a Tim Burton film.
The haunting music of Oxford lecturer Martyn Harry was another stand-out feature in a production that was a brave attempt to make what is essentially high art accessible to its target audience of children over eight.
For me it was sad to reflect on a story of missing children on a day when we had heard so much about how thousands of children were deported to Australia and given new identities.
And it was sad too to see that less than 30 people had turned out to see this show.
Do people not realise that thousands of free tickets for this and other events at Theatre by the Lake are going begging for anyone under 26?
Either something has gone seriously astray with the marketing of this laudible initiative or Cumbrians are turning their noses up at the chance of a free night at the theatre.
Now, that is an horrific thought.
Anyway, enough of my views - this was an operetta created for children so here’s the verdict of my two.
Phoebe Turner, 11: “I’m glad it wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be. The singing was excellent, but it took a bit of getting used to and sometimes it felt like there was too much. Overall I really enjoyed the show – a unique performance.”
Madeleine Turner, 9: “I liked the mixture of people and puppets. The music was really good and I enjoyed the singing. It was a bit weird and strange and it made me feel quite sad when the children were doing naughty things and we knew they would be taken away to the fixing kitchen.”
“Brave, innovative and breaking new ground…”
Viv Hardwick, The Northern Echo, on My Mother Told Me Not to Stare, 23/02/2010
BRAVE, innovative and breaking new ground with a disturbing, high-pitched Benjamin Britten-style Gothic opera using Australian Finegan Kruckemeyer’s words and Oxford lecturer Martyn Harry’s haunting music.
This should be the production which gains Darlington-based Theatre Hullabaloo, and Ellesmere Port’s Action Transport some international accolades.
Troublingly, the overlong songs pushed the production way beyond its 90 minute intended running time and some younger members of the audience were clearly uncomfortable with director Nina Hajiyianni’s pedestrian pace. Children don’t need to be smacked over the head with a constantly repeated dialogue however glossily presented, using clever central circular screen images designed by Bek Palmer.
Tom Bates amuses with a Burtonesque narrator who stitches together an eerie tale of children who are “naughty”
magically vanishing from the Candleford-era village of Upper Crumble.
The rest of the talented cast combine musical, singing, acting and puppetry duties as a host of characters are brought to life.
Gary Albert Hughes is Bobby Rogers (plus flute), the boy who finally challenges “the list”
that all children must obey and ends the tyranny of the fixing kitchen where trouble-makers are taken back to babydom and allocated to fresh parents – just don’t let Gordon Brown hear of that one.
Eva Karell plays the violin and Bobby’s love interest Emily Ives. Eleanor Meynell whips from piano to Mrs Rogers and the monstrous fixing kitchen Nurse. Andrew Sparling (clarinet) is Mr Rogers and the morbid Mr Allen, robbed of a daughter because she went out with a coat in winter.
My 11-year-old companion enjoyed the nightmarish and sometimes confusing scenes on stage, but grew anxious because he couldn’t tell the baddies from the goodies.
Then again, isn’t genius always a little close to madness?
