Gargantua! After a two-and-a-half year pregnancy, Mini Mungus gives birth to a monster – one with an accelerated growth rate and an insatiable appetite for anything that moves!
What do you do with a complex and dramatic beast of a play for the National Theatre Connections competition? Run, hide, say “please can we put on a regular nativity play?” Certainly not, give it to a talented group of Year 10 King Edward’s students and inspiring directorial team who rose confidently and creatively to the colossal theatrical challenge! Loud, arresting music with its insistent rhythms and percussion engaged and disconcerted us as we were immersed into a B-movie world where anything could (and definitely did) happen. Written by the Dummy Suckers (Guitar Louie Milton, Saxophone Adam Kelly, Piano Ben Stringer and on Drums Jack Morgan) and assisted by Fran Barrett and Alba Hubbard, it was stupendous, energetic and fun! The anarchic energy of five and six foot ‘babies’ in a beautiful range of colourful baby gros
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impressively choreographed by Hannah Simmonds intensified our weird otherworldly experience. Their power was set against the repressive force of the military whose dubious morality and belief in brute force were skilfully captured by Greg Taylor as General Malahyde. Lily Robertson and Charlie Jones ran around the stage (as Sally Butters and her cameraman Arnie ) and highlighted the horribly hilarious role of the media in disaster while Doi Phontham (Brian Uber) was certainly keen to make a record out of it! The shouts and comments of Preacher Pike (Elliott Crabbe) ordinarily uplifting brought us right down. The cringeworthy ineptitude of an ego bound, corrupt Prime Minister and his sycophantic cabinet: Pippa Wellard, his deputy, Jeff Creams for the treasury and the creep Robin Wilt, the ‘Iwannaclimbthepoliticalladder’ Junior Minister, was captured in an unsettling but mesmerising way by Alex Rodway, Flo Cornwall, Thomas Wilson and Jago Henderson.