The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart
For you if:
You like your theatre with fairytales, music and lots of laughter
You’re looking for a Christmas show that’s a bit different
Not for you if:
You’re looking for an immersive experience where you play a central role (but please don’t let that put you off - this is great)
In the middle of summer, we walked into the Playfair Library at Edinburgh University for a midwinter’s tale. We are conference delegates at a folklore conference in Kelso on the Scottish borders, where stuffy academic Prudencia Hart has travelled through the sleet and snow to sit on a panel.
Surrounded by post post-structuralist peers who compare traditional ballads to Twitter and Lady Gaga, it’s not the intellectual triumph that Prudencia hopes and things only get worse as she is catapulted out from behind the safety of dusty papers to face the modern folk in the local pub (complete with a rowdy hen do and karaoke). Running out into the night things take a turn for the supernatural and she must contend with hell and, frankly, herself.
Despite minimalist staging and props we were completely transported into a Narnia-esque world fusing modern and olde world Scotland using music and physical theatre. The narrative, inspired by ballads from the Anglo-Scottish borders and told for the most part in witty rhyme, had the audience wrapped up in a modern Scottish fairytale from beginning to end. The storytelling is rowdy and there’s lots of laughter, but in the beginning of second half we go deeper and the production veers sharply away from panto into something much more contemplative, although it never loses its sense of fun.
The production is in a word, magical. The play was designed to be toured in pubs and we the audience are mainly observers seated at round tables and playing at different times delegates, punters, witnesses and on one occasion a motorbike. There are strong, multilayered themes regarding “high” and “low” culture and whether indeed there is a distinction. In this context the choice to make the piece immersive and musical felt particularly pertinent - for why not tell these old tales, that rose to prominence through common popularity, in a format that is now so popular?
This feels like an unusual show at Fringe in terms of its time and monetary commitment - 5 (excellent) actors, 2.5 hours long, £25 tickets. But I feel like all of us in the audience were utterly charmed and left feeling our unusual punt had paid off in our discovery of an excellent secret. I can’t wait for it to be programmed at Christmas so that I have all my friends who have not yet discovered it as an excuse to go again.
