A grand old place has been ransacked. In the background, faded ochre walls and windows precariously closed against the outside world. On the floor, a huge gold chandelier flung down like a carcass. And at the centre, hurdy-gurdy gaiety, sudden bursts of gunfire, Keystone Cops goofiness, leering satanic intervention.
This is Europe in the early to mid-20th century. This is Günter Grass. This is the Kneehigh company at its best. Putting The Tin Drum on stage is an act of audacity by Carl Grose (adapter) and Mike Shepherd (director). The novel’s range is so enormous – parable, magical tale, warning of the rise of the far right, inward reflection. The Shandyesque sprawl, and the fact that chaos and destruction are at the heart of the action does not excuse confusion in some of the storytelling on stage. But the main, urgent drive is never lost. And Kneehigh, mixing wistful melancholy and stamping heartiness, embody some flavours of Grass’s prose.
Details of the novel fly lightly on to the stage: the moth that appears to the narrator, Oskar, to be a winged drummer; the fizzing powder that rouses him sexually. A bright green swimming costume. And the eerie Oskar is cleverly conjured: Grose has said that he was part inspired by David Bowie. Allergic in the womb to the outside world – “Put me back, put me back, in the amniotic sac” – Oskar escapes an unwished-for future as a greengrocer by retaining for ever the body of a three-year-old. He is played by a puppet, a couple of feet tall, whose wooden face has at different angles a hostile gleam and an innocent gaze. A warning but not exactly a moralist.
One of Oskar’s main means of expression – a piercing scream that can shatter glass – is brilliantly caught here. At his eldritch yelp, paper window panes are torn apart. The noise that he makes on his tin drum – his proclamation of resistance, a successor to the drum in Mother Courage – is made by the composer Charles Hazlewood to supply not only a beat but a shimmer of sound that ripples through the action. Hazlewood’s marvellous music is crucial to the evening’s success. There is rarely silence or stillness on stage – this is almost an opera, sung by flexible, alluring, gender-deceiving voices. These songs have sometimes the insinuation of Kurt Weill, sometimes the roar and flounce of rock. And with lyrical fatalism the play begins and ends with a waltz. As if to say, we must cleave together, but history is always a loop.
• The Tin Drum tours until 23 December
