Grimm Tales by the Brothers Grimm
A play of extremes that impels you to laugh, tremble and leave your etiquette at the door.
4ZZZ
I had an absolute blast seeing Grimm and if you love horror with a heart, you will too.
Nothing Ever Happens in Brisbane
Savage and sophisticated’ yes, but also intelligent and probing
Stage Whispers
Impressively clever, brilliantly performed, frequently hilarious and thoroughly entertaining
InReview
Grimm Tales by the Brothers Grimm by Brisbane’s Shaken and Stirred theatre company, is a wickedly subversive play currently touring Australia.
Despite being a reimagining of children’s class fairy tales, it is essentially meant for grownups and comes with a 14+ years rating/warning. There’s a hell of a lot of dark adult humour and cheerful swearing. Which I hasten to add is definitely not gratuitous – it’s integral to the story arc and the characters.
I saw the play a few days ago and it was really special – sexy, witty, camp and funny – but it also has a core of intense seriousness and intellect. A small ensemble cast of four handle multiple characters, moving seamlessly from one character to the next.
Directed by Daniel Evans and adapted by Nelle Lee, the acting is sublime and the play is all about orchestrated chaos, operatic emotions with many wild dives into surreal events. Quelle fabulous!
Having been raised in the English manner, Grimm’s Fairy Tales were a big part of my childhood. My British parents gifted me a hefty vintage tome of the Grimm’s brothers work. I don’t know which edition it was but it smelt musty, was heavy to hold and there was a black and white illustration of a grotesque ogre on the front cover. His beard was matted and filthy and his fierce eyes were those of an angry madman.
The pages of the book were thick, rough-edged, yellow with age and the font was old fashioned. The book appeared to have had a hard life and its spine was out of whack. The hard cover had a linen overlay and it was slowly unraveling, revealing loose threads and brittle dried-up glue.
When I got stuck into the stories I couldn’t believe it was intended for kids. The Grimm brothers terrified me but I was drawn to the mystery and weirdness of their tales. I loved reading and most of my consumption of books happened after the lights went out and I read under my quilt by torchlight. Small wonder I had nightmares after falling asleep with the gloomy Grimm’s Fairy Tales book sitting heavily on my chest.
The brothers version of Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, and Rapunzel had little in common with the cheery, glossy coloured library books which were diplomatically called fairy tales.
On my first readings of the Grimm’s work I was too young to realize the underbelly of their retelling but I sensed many of the tales were disturbing, cruel and bizarre. My life at home was unpredictable and having no trusted adults in my world, I tended towards hyper vigilance and scared easily.
But let’s move on. The brothers Grimm were serious 19th century German academics and authors who were intrigued by European folklore. The play reimagines fairy tales in a deeply subversive way.
A clever fusion of music, dance, puppets and exotic poems enhance the telling of the tales. The players energetic acrobatics and exotic dances were choreographed by Dan Venz.
Contributing greatly to the success of the play is a magnificent set by Josh McIntosh. The play opens at The Witch’s Tit drinking hole/cabaret bar. We meet the Wolf, a sinister piano player. He’s a bad guy in a mangy fur coat, exhibiting the underhanded behaviour of a predator. The doors, trapdoors, windows and ramps featured in the Witch’s Tit are used by the players in the retelling of the fairy tales. And outside the Witch’s Tit is a menacing, gloomy forest with a wonky wooden bridge. The costuming by Paul McCann is wild and stunning and greatly aids the swift morphing of one character to another (see photo above by Joel Devereux).
I found the actors totally engaging and the whole experience simply irresistible. Henry Rollo as the singing, dancing, piano playing Wolf was extraordinary. Rollo covered the gamut of transgressive behaviour and slowly morphed into a cruel, murderous horror character without descending into melodrama. He bought to mind Tim Curry as the outrageous Doctor Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I would definitely recommend a trip to the theatre to see The Grimm Tales.
detail of photo (above) by Joel Devereux – Grimm Tales actor in Little Red Riding Hood costume.