The Place Of Magic

Initially I was a wee bit disappointed by Collected Grimm Tales. Since it's advertised as containing the dramatisation for the stage by Tim Supple and the Young Vic Company I thought I'd be reading some fairly detailed scripts, but this was not the case. It's very difficult indeed to figure out how exactly the Tales worked on stage, as the script given is pretty much the translations/adaptations from the Brothers Grimm by Carol Ann Duffy divided up for voices with very little in the way of explanations of how the words were 'played' on stage. However, I soon got over whatever disappointment I felt in the simple pleasure of reading the texts.

The poet's rendering of the stories is stark and to the point, exactly what's needed to bring them to rumbustious life. I was struck by the sheer simple energy of the tales, how pure they are in terms of reducing everything to bare story, yet how genuinely magical they are in their pragmatic acceptance of the unlikeliness of the events involved. No worries here about characterisation. The characters just are: they do what they need to do and leave the listener to catch up with them.

I was particularly struck by just how dark the tales could be, especially in terms of the vicious relish with which the fates of the 'villains' was rendered. I don't think I'd ever encountered the notion of the step-mother of Snow White being forced to wear red hot shoes and dance to her death at her step-daughter's marriage feast, but it's an image that will stay with me.

My favourite of all the stories was Rumpelstiltskin, a tale I loved as a child and which I don't think I'd read since. Carol Ann Duffy's retelling seemed exactly the same as what I'd heard as a nipper. The titular character's rage at the end, tearing himself in two, seemed just as impressive to me as an old geezer as it did all those years ago. Not sure how you'd put that on stage!