WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2024

The Adventures Of Red Riding Hood   Production Photo: Melissa Gordon

From the pen and direction of Patrick J O'Reilly and the music of Garth McConaghie comes The Adventures Of Red Riding Hood, a MAC Belfast Christmas tale full of bravery, inventiveness and the significance of every little thing we see as magic in technical, literary, melodic and performative art. It is an invitation to dream, a chance to think about and enjoy the journeys and motivations of famous fictional characters in a vibrant, conceptually witty atmosphere bursting with light and life – a tonic for all ages during this holiday season.

With any tonic comes a most interesting tone, and in this world, Red Riding Hood (Naoimh Morgan) is a social media star, Jack Horner (Jack Watson) is a pie salesman, Goldilocks (Catriona McFeely) is a singing diva with a poor reputation, and the now Toned Good Wolf (Jay Hutchinson) is a yoga teacher singing of "dreamy fizzy magic" and "lovely fluffy goodness". It's a form of conceptual amusement that's also satirical in holding up a (can I say "magic" again?) mirror to the present-day trend of backstories in cinematic remakes and reboots, but where the solemnity is subversively flipped on its head to maintain a well-paced level of fun aligned to consistent fascination both with what is happening in the moment and what is yet to come on the journey to the house of Granny Hood (Ash Ashton). Will the wolf become "big" and "bad" again? Will Red Riding Hood lose her way? Will Jack sell anything? Will Goldilocks rebuild an image that's taken enough of a denting from eating bears' porridge, breaking bears' chairs and sleeping in bears' beds? Will they all band together and put their differences aside when they need to? It's all there to be discovered.

Production Photo: Melissa Gordon

Delights really are plentiful here. Diana Ennis's set design makes smart use of a giant screen as a storytelling backdrop to the players, who brilliantly meet the challenges in the strong scripting and Paula O'Reilly's energetic choreography. In an alternative to both her poignant portrayal of Pat Hume in Beyond Belief: The Life and Mission of John Hume and her Audrey in Little Shop Of Horrors, the wonderful Naoimh Morgan is an ingeniously sly and charmingly heartfelt title character, a sort of Emily In Fairyland but with heightened charm and less irritation. Catriona McFeely is – I can't help it – pure gold as Goldilocks, her vocals and dialogue delivery an ideal fit for McConaghie's catchy tunes and the character's nature. Jay Hutchinson, Jack Watson and Ash Ashton are all tremendous presences, meeting the demands of this mixed up, muddled up and shaken up world with great skill.

In another way, these adventures of Red Riding Hood strengthen through comparison with Jon M Chu's recent adaptation of Wicked. Although there is no obvious Elphaba, the same questions about the clothing which can conceal or reveal a person's identity remain. When we look at Red and Goldilocks, each exhibiting another case of classy Gillian Lennox costuming, we see colours of royal red, bright white and light blue where there would have been pitch black and bright pink amidst Elphaba and Galinda in Oz. Here, a contrast between the dark and bubbly is traded for what can represent the unification and development of a complicated Western dream, a Galinda vs Galinda duel of individualist wants smoothed over into a need to be inclusive, kind and work together as a group once dangers arise. The Adventures Of Red Riding Hood is not only wickedly fun, but also wickedly clever, defying not necessarily gravity but all forms of conventional artistic forces to successfully reinvent several popular fairy tales with everything, from everywhere and through everyone involved on stage and in the audience all at once.

Simon Fallaha

The Adventures Of Red Riding Hood runs at The MAC, Belfast, until Wednesday January 1, 2025. For more information, and tickets, click here.