Wise children

Hah, was just going to post that - desperation or what? As they don't normally do this.

Actually I’ve seen them do this for press nights of other shows to get a full house - it’s just the upper circle and dress circle slips they have on offer

The tours normally go ok don't they? The knee high touring model works out

Only for certain projects.

Those with a popular source material do ok (at least that is what I have been told of the Oxford box office performance)

But those more on the fringe of public awareness can struggle.

I personally don't think that Carter is mainstream enough for this to be a dead cert.

I think most stuff recently at the old Vic has sold pretty badly.

I was moderately tired and moderately grumpy when I saw this and presumably as a result, I really didn't get on well with the play at all. I found the childish tone clashing with the adult topics that emerge quite annoying, the humour was poor and fundamentally I just wasn't engaged or interested in what was going on. I'm sure a happy Andrew would have come away with a more positive view, but I ended up leaving at the interval. Hilariously a member of staff approached me on my way out to ask if I would like to give my opinions for a video they were filming, and I advised that I was probably not the best person to ask...

I enjoyed this, more for Emma Rice than Angela Carter. The point of union for Rice and Carter is a love of song and dance, and Emma Rice's populism makes those elements glorious, particularly the showgirl dancing duo of Melissa James and Omari Douglas, but a lack of depth to the characters reduces most of them to whimsy and Carter's teenage provocations are wearing. Loads of fun to be had if you switch your brain off.

Spoilers follow. . .

There is a line in this about wanting something to happen, anything. That is Carter's sensibility, that anything good or bad is a rollercoaster of worthwhile experience to be celebrated. I have only read her "The Bloody Chamber" short fairy stories, not "Wise Children" nor anything else, so I speak from ignorance, but while Carter's prose is phenomenal: mischievous, taboo-breaking, gory, surprising, enveloping, her characters make zero sense.

I mean, in her short story, "Company of Wolves," (Spoiler alert), after the Wolf eats her granny, Carter's Red Riding Hood isn't bothered and shags the wolf, and cuddles him. It's a fun story, but not about a character you believe. This not-bothered experiential indulgent teenage type of thinking translates into this work too, where jumping into bed with your uncle is somehow just a frolic, and CS Lewis' "child porn" is gleeful story punctuation. Carter reverently embraces Shakespeare's comedy plotting, with multiple twins and mistaken identities, but not his psychologically realistic characters, so without her brilliant prose to disguise it, the flimsiness of her plot is here exposed.

For me, Emma Rice's love of singing and dancing and theatre is associated with a celebration of community, whereas Angela Carter's is associated with self-masturbation, and while you can merge those two sensibilities in a love of show, song and dance, in this instance, this is a weird mismatch that leaves a strange taste, like the lingering fatty lipids that make a punter later regret a Dominos pizza feast.

There are elements to this feast I loved, other than the singing, dancing, and the dazzling duo of Douglas and James. I also loved Katy Owen's comedic caricaturing, her Grandma Chance reminding me of Catherine Tate's brazen Nan, but with more heart and a penchant for nudity (here depicted by a hilarious floppy body stocking). Still, the lewdness is pure Tate, with Owen's Grandma declaring "As you Lick it" to be her favourite Shakespeare, or "As you flick it, when you're taming your shrew." I loved not only Owens, though she's the best at it, but all the vaudeville style comedy performances, including Gareth Snook's Dora, and Paul Hunter's lecherous Melchior.

If I'd ever read it, I suspect I'd conclude that "Wise Children" cannot be successfully adapted, as the plot is more unwieldy and less attractive than the prose. I assume that's what the National concluded when their decade-old commissioned version from Bryony Lavery disappeared without a trace. If anybody can make it fun, it's Emma Rice, and to a great degree, she's succeeded, in spite of it.

3 and a half stars.

This article is very telling:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45744643

She only wants to listen to certain voices...

The lack of overwhelmingly positive reactions to this launch project does not bode well for the future of Wise Children as a company. It needed to land with a bang to justify the massive injection of public money. Mixed reviews will not deliver that.

There has yet to be a rave review that I have seen. Ticket sales are sluggish.

That is not overwhelming positivity which is what I was talking about.

Positive isn't enough to make the ACE decision easier to defend.

I have yet to understand why this work needed a new company. It seems firmly within the Kneehigh remit and indeed has the current Kneehigh boss in the cast.

On top of the ACE direct money, there are a number of ACE funded co-producers on board.

I maintain that Angela Carter is not known as widely as is necessary to establish this as a surefire winner. Rice's popular success was due to her adaptation of Noel Coward - a far more marketable source.

Yes, there are Rice fans. And there are Carter fans. There is no doubt an overlap between those groups. But that doesn't appear to be enough to fill theatres.

Most the reviews seem to be raves ( 4 stars) so I imagine it will help pick up sales in London and across the country