Rob Greenland and his son Francis went along to the West Yorkshire Playhouse on Tuesday evening to see Complicite’s production of Lionboy. Here’s what they thought…
You never quite know what you’re going to get when you go to what might be described as a family show. I’m not really one for audience participation, and my son’s reached that age where he’s starting to lose some of the who-cares-if-I-end-up-looking-a bit silly abandon of childhood.
I hadn’t heard of Complicite – the company behind this production of Lionboy (although I’ve since realised that they’re well thought of if you’re in the know) and neither of us had read the book either, so we turned up with an open mind – particularly as we’d only found out we were going a couple of hours earlier.
There was plenty in Lionboy to keep both of us entertained and involved until the end. What child can’t be drawn into the world of a main character who can talk to animals – in this case cats, large and small. And the main storyline – good against evil, human progress versus capitalist greed – appealed to us both. An innocent child finding his way in a world of adults with mixed up values reminded us of the last play we’d been to – I was a Rat! at City Varieties.
As we sat down Frank commented on the set – which, as is the way these days looked more like a rehearsal room than a theatre stage – yet we both thought they used it really well and left enough gaps to make our imaginations work that bit harder. Plenty of drumming and a fair bit of circus kept us both entertained too.
We both thought Adetomiwa Edun – as the main character Charlie Ashanti – was excellent – and we loved his portrayal of the circus lions too – no lion head costumes required. We thought the second half lacked something – it was only 25 minutes long – and as an audience we didn’t seem ready for the bit where we were supposed to participate. But maybe that was just me….
There were plenty of families there along with big groups of young people – I’d say mainly around 10-14 years of age. They reckon it’s good for kids 8 and above and that seems about right.
Overall, we both enjoyed it – a decent mix of strong storytelling, good acting and enough noise and flashing lights to keep us both entertained til the end