‘The Untold Fable of Fritz’ (Bedfringe, 21 July 2024)

“A powerful story powerfully told by a company with a growing reputation as master distillers of ultra-fine blends of devised and scripted.”

There are few greater pleasures in this world than sitting back in your seat and sensing that your child is getting properly immersed in something special at the theatre. All that past handholding. All the previous coaxing. All those not-too-subtle BIG, LOUD, JOLLY shows that helped get us to this place, they’ve paid off. Feeding children’s minds is like feeding their wee bodies. There comes a (much-needed) point where subtlety, craft, and nuance creep in and take a seat at the table. Tomato ketchup gets substituted with olive oil. Tea and cake take the place of lemonade and Harribo. If you are wise, which I am not, this will have been an organic maturation with the pace set by the growing human entrusted to your care.

ME: “I don’t like sitting front row centre.” HER: “Well I do.” We take our seats. All this learning to share things, places, and experiences involves compromise. I tell myself that giving in every time is helping to show her how to compromise. I’m not sure that’s the take-home she’s learning. And yet, it was a good choice by Daughter 1.0 (9yrs). What’s about to envelop us is 45mins of immersive storytelling by a company that excels in small, subtly unmissable detail.

The heir to the throne is sick. Very sick. The King must take him on a journey of recovery through the ice and the snow. From the low to the high. From sunlit heights of majesty to icy depths of helplessness. It’s a powerful story powerfully told by a company with a growing reputation as master distillers of ultra-fine blends of devised and scripted.

Unsettled Theatre is a company which places mindfulness and sensitivity at the heart of its process. And yet, the group successfully summit a story about a king, about a man, who is anything but. They plant their flag on this perilous peak without, and this is the genius bit, without oversimplifying the toxicity or trauma. This truly is a healing space. The pre-Newtonian gravity of Philip Pullman’s original concept, on which the story is based, grounds proceedings in an ultra-linear, ultra-fluid calm until at the pivotal moments, just for an instant, the safety curtain between modern secular theatre and the ecstatic sensations of drama as known to the ancients falls. We glimpse the almighty power humans share to transport ourselves beyond a particular moment and location.

In her notebook, the one with a painting of the Brontitallian statue of Arthur Dent on the cover, Daughter 1.0 wrote:

“At the Bedford festival fringe I saw the untold fable of Fritz. I really enjoyed it and would definefly want to see it again. There are some happy bits in it and a few sad bits. There was a very cool bit were all the lights go off but there is one light behind a sheet and you could see the shadow of a small cart which I thought was very cool. I also thought thoght the wooden doll that played Fritz was also cool. Fritz is very mischevious but is very good at games! I really recomend it!”

Come for a show that pushes creative boundaries while pressing all the right buttons. Stay for the stagecraft. Leave knowing that productions of this quality are out there waiting to be discovered. Get your warmest coats on (seriously, your very warmest coats) and go see this!