THEATRE

Created by National Theatre Wales in association with Told by an Idiot, the show is a theatrical adaptation of the collection of short stories (with the same title) by Welsh storyteller Gwyn Thomas, and the life of the author entwined. The result is a somewhat confusing collaboration, and if it was particularly brilliant, it went over my head.

The show was true to its storytelling routes, using the character of the deceased Gwyn Thomas as a narrator and folklorist song, which kept the momentum of the piece fluid. Although I confess I found the performance to drag at times and I adopted a sleepy haze around my head.

Interspersed with a naturalistic acting style, were fleeting stylised episodes and I sensed a Berkoff influence. But the overall shape of the performance seemed to lack a stylistic axis. A giant puppet is awkwardly thrust into the mix in replacement of an actor, and isn’t even manipulated in a convincing way.  The rustic aesthetic gave the piece some grounding, but the impressive staging of a mountain of functioning dark wood wardrobes; used as entrances and exits could only anchor the piece as far as the visual content extends. But I didn’t feel the mask of the dead Thomas worked, and his looming presence on stage would have worked without it, certainly his physicality altered little from the other actors, and the mask didn’t really indicate death artistically. His role in the plot was clever, as he consistently supplied words and sentences for the characters to use, which enforced the presence of the writer, and his role in the stories.

I am at a loss to explain the purpose of the Parkinson chat show interludes with Dolly Parton and Billy Connolly, except to further unhinge the plot from reality and a fixed time frame; as if to make some pretentious comment about the immortality of the authors documented words. I still don’t know what to make of the performance, so if anything it should be praised for leaving an impact on its audience, but I fear that without the set designer, this performance would have laid to rest with the author whose life and works it celebrates.