It sure is a Grimm world out there if you’re a fairytale heroine. “These stories are so strong that they can withstand all kinds of different tellings,” suggests Philip Pullman in the programme to these staged adaptations. But what is offered here is highly traditional in its presentation of women and their roles. Beauty and virtue are rewarded, often with a royal marriage.
Philip Wilson staged a handful of Pullman’s versions of Grimm at Shoreditch Town Hall last year, but these are all new and are played out over several floors of the atmospheric Bargehouse. A spoiled princess is forced to share her bed with a frog in order to learn that beauty is only skin-deep; a king lusts after his daughter; a good girl is rewarded, while her less kind stepsister is cursed to spit frogs.
It’s a mite dangerous to label a show immersive when it takes place so close to the Thames, and this isn’t, in fact, immersive: you simply watch the shows in the traditional seated manner, staged in differently designed auditoriums. Tom Rogers’ fabulous design drips with secrets and mystery, and is touched by tantalising forbidden apples, witchy twigs and golden tresses. It is as if the stories have seeped into the walls of the building, which echoes with untold tales glimpsed via seven little truckle beds or a spinning wheel.
The evening has a dreamy quality, as if a dusty spell has been cast, but alas, it’s broken by all the hanging around and being penned in to areas while people try to flog us pricey food and drink or merchandise. “The shop’s still open,” called an usher as we left. It seems that even fairytale magic comes with a steep price tag attached.
• Until 11 April. Box office: 0844 124 650. Venue: Bargehouse, London.
