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'Enough to impress a non-fan’ |
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KATS ‘Moving Pictures’ at Kennet School, Thatcham, from Thursday July31st to Saturday August 2nd.
‘Let me confess up front: I’m not a fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld fantasy land. To describe it as Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy meets Monty Python and The Goodies may be unfair; but it gives you a starting point.
Moving Pictures is a stage adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s book of the same name by KATS director John Hicks and co-director Kevin Miller.
When the alchemists realise there isn’t money to be made turning lead into gold, they move to Holy Wood and embark on the invention of movies (or clicks as they call them).
The play covers the era of the silent clicks, with the cameras powered by six demons (two to paint the pictures and four to blow them dry) and contains lots of neat allusions to films, especially Gone with the Wind and King Kong.
The producer Mr Silverfish gets bulldozed by hot-dog vendor Dibbler, who sweet talks his way into becoming the cigar-toting director, with Ginger and Victor (plus Victor’s dog Gaspode) as his lead actors.
Ginger and Victor provide the (platonic) love interest. Dibbler never achieves his dream of a film with 1,000 elephants, before Holy Wood collapses.
The most notable thing about this large-cast production (I counted 31 at the curtain call) was the high standard of acting throughout.
The main characters Dibbler (Kevin Miller), Ginger (Jenna Sharpe), Victor (David Richardson) and Gaspode (Ruth Gostelow) were all excellent.
Among the many other high-class performances were Siouxsie Ashmore as Silverfish, Kieron Turner as the Arthur Mullard-like troll Detritus, Claire Bowden as Soll, and Keith Phillips and (Jon Lovell) as the two wizards (although I never did work out what the Ming vase with the spitting elephants was all about).
The costumes, props and make up were splendid, and very effective. The action had a large number of different scenes, which fitted in well with the large stage, but the scene transitions inevitably slowed things down. It would work better as a television production or film and , at nearly three hours, Moving Pictures is an epic in its own right.
I’m still not a fan, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying this quality show.
Paul Shave, NWN 7th August 2008
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