Theatre company 1927 pushing the boundaries of digital scenery and action
1927: Please Right Back
at the Oxford Playhouse
from Wednesday September 25 to Saturday 28
Review by JON LEWIS
Mystery Man
It’s been seven years since the theatre company 1927 last toured to Oxford with its production Golem so there’s a sizeable audience that hasn’t experienced their theatrically whizzy blend of live performance and filmed animations. The latest show, Please Right Back, written and directed by Suzanne Andrade with the visuals by Paul Barritt, is a wow, although other companies have joined 1927 in pushing the boundaries of digital scenery and action.
Based on memories of Andrade’s childhood, the story follows two children, Kim (Charlae Phillips), a bespectacled 13-year-old schoolgirl and her younger brother Davey (voiced by Patrick Copley as the character is an animated drawing) as they write letters to their absent father (Stefan Davis).
Kim signs off her letters with ‘please right back’, the misspelling echoed in the childlike drawings of the homes and businesses nearby where the pub sign written as ‘The Hope and Ancor’.
Dad’s letters are full of fantasy stories where he’s recast as a heroic figure, Mr E (Mystery) hunting down a balding man, Mr Big and the contents of an attaché case. Barritt’s animations speed though scenes of derring-do as Mr E’s adventures leads him to meet a depressed lion locked up in a circus train, the idea taken from the lion pattern seen on Davey’s bedspread. Whether it’s a pirate gang, a tourist bar within the Bermuda Triangle managed by a lobster or hordes of Mr Big-like office workers walking through town, the children live to receive these regular letters.
However, in the real world, dad is in prison, Kim joins a Godfather-inspired Italian gang and mum (Jenny Mills) borrows from a payday loans organisation.
She’s visited by Sally (Lara Cowin) who Sally and mum both pretend is a friend, but really is an official for a government agency preventing children of criminals falling into crime. There are surreal scenes of children in a special school wearing alphabet clown suits and similarly patterned dunces’ hats.
The social satire is echoed in a succession of musical hall and cabaret songs. The audience cheers when mum finally finds her voice and banishes officialdom from their lives.
Totally thrilling entertainment.
