Widdershin | Get Your Coats On

“You have to take silly really seriously to make such magic happen.”

Children’s theatre is hard because you have to make it look easy. I once saw newsreel footage of Her Late Majesty inspecting preparations for a sumptuous banquet at Buckingham Palace. Wow, tough crowd. Britain’s longest-reigning monarch was not easily impressed. There was a cake which, a breathless royal watcher solemnly intoned, had taken a team of top bakers and pastry chefs so long to make that several of those bowing and scrapping in the royal presence were the children or grandchildren of the original egg crackers. There was enough gold leaf to Goldfinger a hippopotamus, more layers than a Scandinavia crime drama, and icing as intricate as the plaster cornicing in Brighton Pavillion. HM smiled thinly, nodded and passed on. Ostentatious and insincere displays of emotion were not her thing. The same applies to children for whom everything is a wonder and so nothing is a wonder. It takes a Merlin to captivate such open and shut little minds.

We enter to find Andy Lawrence looking younger than he did 12 months ago. This is a man around who time and space happily bend. As my brood of chicks grows, I am more and more impressed by those saints among us who can turn a gaggle of noisy brats into a gathering of earnest ears, eager to absorb the erudition coming at them. You have to take silly really seriously to make such magic happen and Andy’s tales are gorgeously silly – as light and fluffy as a cake fit for a queen. It looks effortless, but packed into each of Andy’s daily 40-minute Bedfringe morning sessions is the cumulated effort of years of storytelling, puppetry, stagecraft, and experience. Time bends. It folds neatly into a wizard’s bag of tricks.

Daughter 1.0 (8 years) wrote the following in her notebook, the one with sequins stitched onto the cover so that they show a rainbow when rubbed one way and a frog, sitting on a toadstool, playing what I think is a flageolet, on the other.

“Today I went to The Hare and the Heghog. At the front there was some cushions for children to sit on. On stange there was an old wooden chest an old seet and a few music boxes.

He lold a story of a heghog Who beat a Havisham hair in a race and how Havisham hair became kind.

I liked when he used Strings to make the hair move along, I also liked when he got big funny ears to make him look like the hair.

Last year and yesterday I saw pigs and bears don’t come in pairs. Pigs and bears don’t come in pairs is a show of two stories “the three little pigs” and “Goldieloks and the three bears” And I liked seeing the same man doing another funny show.”

Someone somewhere once described heaven as waking up each morning to a fresh P. G. Wodehouse novel on the bedside table. They neglected to follow up by saying that the next item on the agenda of eternal bliss is a saunter down to Bedfringe with your angels to watch Andy Lawrence doing something divine, bringing the young and the young at heart together in another masterclass in the power of theatre.

Reviewer: Dan Lentell

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“Two of the most gorgeous, and delicate tellings of familiar tales you’ll hear this side of ‘Jackonory’ in the TV show’s glory days.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

There’s a reason Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley never cut a record together. The two artists wanted to collaborate but, in their infinite wisdom, Elvis’ managers kept making offers Dolly’s people could easily refuse. The way she tells it, this meeting of minds but not of pocketbooks was a vital early lesson. The industry is called “show business” for a reason, some choices have to be made with your head in spite of your heart. For the producers and creators of children’s theatre, where innocence and magic are so integral to any successful production, keeping worldly Ying and otherworldly Yang in harmony over the long term is not so much a soft skill as a superpower. Sad, but true, theatre involves much more bean-counting than fantastic geese who lay golden eggs. It’s not about the scale either. Stan Lee simply created picture books just as Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler do. These artists are the Warhols and Picassos of their world. But for all the corporate billions in revenue, the art is still what matters. When you’ve got an artist who can make ends meet by producing fabulous content for impressionable young minds, you can move the world for that is the lever Archimedes was talking about.

We enter to find Andy Lawrence, like a middle-years Merlin of enchantment and make-believe, bespectacled and be-beared. If you’ve ever wanted to see someone who can seem to saunter when they’re standing still, look no further. You go into some shows and you feel like you’re a medieval burgher, being loudly induced to stay and watch a back-of-the-cart performance in the market square. Lawrence is much softer, much subtler. It’s impossible not to warm to him. From the soft lighting to Paolo Conte quietly crooning ‘Happy Feet’, this is someone who knows how to set a calming scene for those of us not always guaranteed to use our inside voices. What follows are two of the most gorgeous, and delicate tellings of familiar tales you’ll hear this side of ‘Jackonory’ in the TV show’s glory days. If there was such a thing as an ultra-robust souffle, guaranteed never to let you down at the last minute, this would be it. Daughter 1.0 (7yrs) wrote this to her Godmother:

“Dear Aunty Claire, I went to the bedfod festival fringe. I went to see pigs and bears don’t come in pairs! There were two stories. The tree little pigs and Goldllocks and the tree bears. First there was the tree little pigs he used a three to show the house where all of them lived. And the wolf was a bit shabby wich made him look hungry and scary. In Goldilocks and the three bears he put on big ears for the Daddy bear a medium size bear and a tiny bear. Goldilocks hated having bathes and was a very messy eater. And she put her Whole face in the bole of porge. And the bears were so scared oh her! I loved it! Lots of love xxx”

Merlin had his wizard’s staff, Theatre of Widdershins* has its puppetry. The characters, especially the big bad wolf, are simply perfect, which not every sightline in the Bedfringe studio is. The hand-crafted world they inhabit is joyous. It makes the heart sing. The Three Bears’ House is so elaborately simple as to defy belief. If J. Robert Oppenheimer had built dolls’ houses, they would have looked like these. Even so, like Merlin’s staff, all these props are secondary to the man himself. If you’re looking for someone to keep the kids entertained, or to mentor the once and future king of all England, Andrew Lawrence, is your guy.

*Widdershins is the auld English term for counter-clockwise, contrary to the sun’s course, left-handed and no, I didn’t have to ask.

Reviewer: Dan Lentell

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