This Sleeping Beauty tries too hard to be different
Boring, passive heroines are so old hat. At the RSC Wendy is the brave, intrepid star of Ella Hickson’s remake of Peter Pan, while at Bristol Old Vic, the Prince Charming in Sally Cookson’s new version of
Sleeping Beauty is a girl, who wakes the supine Prince Percy by giving him CPR. Cookson, whose arresting adaptation of Jane Eyre is currently at the National Theatre, is establishing a fearsome reputation for breathing fresh life into familiar classics: her 2011 de-Disneyfied take on Cinderella was also a memorable treat.
Here she doesn’t just reverse the gender dynamic of the centuriesold fairy story (a decision absurdly dubbed by MP Peter Bone as “political correctness gone mad”), she replaces its little-known second half with an obscure Welsh folk tale called The Leaves That Hung But Never Grew, about a young girl on a quest to find the titular leaves at the urging of her beloved late grandmother.
To be honest, the sheer amount of plot generated by Cookson’s arbitrary hitching together of two disparate narratives overwhelms the gains to be made in feminising Sleeping Beauty. No sooner has poor Percy awoken from his 100-year-sleep thanks to plucky Deilen – who only kisses him because she fears he might be dead, not for any sappy romantic reason – than he is dragged into another torrid adventure as she searches for these mysterious leaves, during which he is turned into a pig and loses his memory.
As incident piles upon incident, you start to suspect the gender swap is merely a convenient means for Cookson to bring together the two tales rather than a serious attempt to interrogate gender archetypes.
There are plenty of effervescent comic touches. Percy’s fairy godmothers are a coven of WI members sporting sherbet-coloured raincoats and hair-dos who gossip to each other on old-fashioned telephones stored in their handbags. David Emmings is an endearingly nice but dim Percy. But it’s Stu Goodwin who steals the show as the evil witch Sylvia in an electric blue bob. She initially casts the finger prick spell on Percy, only to later transform him into a pig and his godmothers into lambs.
Yet the show feels like a quilt made from mismatched shapes. Worse, much as you want to root for Kezrena James’s Deilen, she lacks the wit of a truly original heroine. While everyone else gets to sing droll, Americanaflavoured ditties, ably abetted by an onstage band, she sings icky power ballads. You wish Cookson had stuck with fully exploring the one story rather than muddying it with a second. This show has its moments but by her standards it’s a disappointment. Until Jan 17. Tickets: 0117 987 7877; bristoldvic.org.uk