In Arabic, Amal means “hope”. And hope is embodied in each step of The Walk, the journey across Europe, begun in July, made by the three-and-a-half metre-tall puppet called Little Amal. By the time she arrives in Manchester on 3 November, she will have walked more than 5,000 miles from the Syrian-Turkish border, a refugee child in search of her mother. In Greece she was pelted with stones. In France she moved through fields of sunflowers, their heads drooping as if they were tired children. In Italy she was taught to make pasta. She appeared against the white cliffs of Dover, and in Lewisham, south London, where crowds of children yelled: “Two four six eight, who do we appreciate? Little Amal!”
She evokes wonder and sorrow. She is a marvellous contradiction. She celebrated her 10th birthday with a party at the Victoria and Albert Museum, but she towers above adults: her hands are large enough to cup a human face. She is an expressive presence who cannot speak. People reach out to touch her, rather as people must once have waited for the royal touch to cure them – yet she is no monarch. The ceremonial west doors of St Paul’s Cathedral swung open to welcome her a week ago: as she bent her head to the clerics in purple, she might have seemed to bless them – but piety is not part of her vocabulary. Her walk is tentative and gentle but it is deliberate.
Little Amal is made by Handspring Puppet Company – the creators behind War Horse – who co-produce The Walk with Good Chance, under the overall artistic directorship of Amir Nizar Zuabi. Her red and purple skirt swings just below her knees; her red boots are the size of builder’s hods; flat locks of hair stream over her shoulders, tied with a red ribbon. You can see her being manipulated: puppeteers, like Lilliputians, walk beside her in full view moving her arms and legs. You never think she is flesh: the latticework of her chest and limbs is laid bare. She has no heart of her own – a puppeteer is plainly visible, lodged inside her chest – yet she makes the hearts of those around her beat faster. She is a tremendous example of how a feeling of reality and truth does not depend on naturalism. She is an unconscious political ambassador and an ambassador for the imagination.
In Trafalgar Square, Mark Rylance sang to her – and was heckled; there were filmed greetings from Judi Dench and Chiwetel Ejiofor and Annie Lennox, and exhilarating hip-hop from the Boy Blue theatre company. Little Amal danced too – and danced again in the Roundhouse, where she swayed, grave yet seeming on the brink of a smile (how can that be with wooden lips?) to the rippling sitar of Anoushka Shankar. She swayed and stooped close up to her audience – and then, asked to go backstage for a moment, she sulked. She may be a refugee but she is more than a symbol: she is a child.
Refuge is also at the heart of Emma Rice’s marvellous adaptation of Wuthering Heights. In this whirling production, Heathcliff is found not on the streets of Liverpool but at the docks: more in flight than abandoned. This is a tweak not a betrayal: the abuse – physical and verbal – he suffers at the hands of the so-called civilised is there on the page.
Other imaginings are equally powerful. Out goes the down-to-earth housekeeper who frames the Brontë action. In, as if borne on the wind, comes gutsy and gusty Nandi Bhebhe as an incarnation of the moor, surrounded by a chorus who dance like gorse pushing against a storm. Out goes the idea that the test of true love must be bellowing in a man and obliteration in a woman. Rice’s play is about the corrosive power of cruelty – and the healing power of kindness. Ash Hunter, with his greatly reverberating voice, is a marvellous Heathcliff: adamantine and compelling. Lucy McCormick’s Cathy – like a rock chick and a pre-Raphaelite model in a nightie – is always spun round by her ferocious yearnings.
This remaking has compassion, wit and cheek. Who knew that a Brontë man would find bliss in an apron, baking a Victoria sponge? Who could have anticipated Katy Owen’s brilliant performance as floppy boy invalid and wheedling bride: “Sometimes I slide down the bannisters because it tickles my tuppence.”
E Brontë would surely have applauded a design that suggests humans perch precariously on the natural world. Vicki Mortimer’s set – flimsy walls and doors, quickly carried on and off – is dwarfed by the big sweep of Simon Baker’s videos, in which glowering cloudscapes are crossed by the wings of large dark birds. Ian Ross’s music brings further swells of intensity: a throaty cello, a double bass, antic bursts on a melodeon; Etta Murfitt’s choreography sends frenzy and anguish scudding across the stage.
It is extraordinary to see these echoes of brutality and rescue travel from the 19th to the 21st century, and to be reminded both within a theatre and on the streets how imagination and empathy can offer hope: amal. It was, after all, a dramatist who gave us the overused but much-needed phrase “the kindness of strangers”.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Walk ★★★★★
Wuthering Heights ★★★★
Little Amal’s walk ends in Manchester on 3 November
Wuthering Heights is at Bristol Old Vic until 6 November/ will be livestreamed, 4-6 November; then tours until 28 May 2022
