Rumpelstiltskin - Plymouth Herald

Cornwall's Miracle Theatre storms the stage with their bold and colourful not-quite-pantomime. Rumpelstiltskin is a long way from your usual panto subjects, and to hang the story on his ‘revenge’ predicates a novel kind of seasonal offering.

Miracle take us back to the Victorian era. A resourceful troupe of actors tour the provinces, sprinkling some of London’s seasonal glamour. The story they tell is an extension of the Rumpelstiltskin tale about the girl for whom the dwarf spins straw into gold. The king married her, and they have a daughter, Tootabell, a self centred, ill-tempered tyrant. Miracle’s development involves attempts to marry her off to a variety of suitors, and four occasions when Rumpelstiltskin, magicked into a six foot dwarf, comes to her aid on receiving her promise to marry him, but she and mother deceive him.

Enter another villain in the form of the Forest Fairy. And in the end Tootabell casts her lot in with Rumpelstiltskin.

There are superb sets, seven in number, changed by the players, plus special effects, like the (wo)man eating dragon, and the rolling seas. New words, some witty, some bawdy, have been written to music by Purcell, Handel and Dibdin. But what lifts the enterprise into the special category is the style of playing. Or should that rather be styles? For they mix and match melodrama with the finer points of Coarse Acting, and panto staples like audience participation - lots of 'it’s behind you', and 'oh yes it is'.

There’s even the indispensable singalong. Here they have resurrected 'Hot Codlins', which was first introduced by the great clown Joseph Grimaldi in the early 1800s. So Miracle give us a glorious blend of tradition and innovation. Tom Adams, Ben Dyson and Jason Squibb have the measure of this farrago of nonsense, and work the audience brilliantly. Sally Crooks has a tougher job as Tootabell, but gives as good as she gets. An evening of real delight, which the capacity audience thoroughly appreciated. BILL STONE