The Age, Australia
Grimm & grimmer
July 1, 2007
Fairytales have escaped the nursery, finding their way into everything from fashion to furniture. On the eve of the Malthouse's rock'n'roll version of Sleeping Beauty, John Bailey picks up the story.
(extract)
Child witnesses grandma's slaying. Break and enter ends in homicide. Neglected children murder cannibal. These might sound like lurid stories ripped from today's headlines, but you probably know them as Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Hansel and Gretel.
Fairytales were never innocent but today, more than ever, adults are reclaiming them as their own. Grown-ups read Harry Potter and laugh at Shrek. Reality TV offers ordinary girls the chance to become a European princess. From advertising to art, catwalks to cabaret, the trappings of a mythical Once Upon a Time are suddenly looking very now.
But is it just nostalgia for a simpler world of good and evil, detailed in pastel pinks and populated by flouncing maids and Princes Charming? Or are darker forces at work, bubbling away beneath the surface and hinting that Ever After might not be so happy after all?
The Malthouse Theatre is about to launch its grandest show for the year, Sleeping Beauty. Book the babysitter, though, because this fairytale is an adults-only rock'n'roll epic of blood, sex, desire and obsession.
Kantor knew from the outset that this story would be told entirely through song - not a word of dialogue has been added to the playlist. From Bowie to Brahms, Nick Cave to Elvis Costello, gospel to disco, this is a fairytale with a driving beat.
"Songs are flexible and find new meaning and resonances in different environments,"says the director. "So an Elvis Costello song I Want You, which was a hideous scream of pain from a jilted lover, now becomes a song of a mother and father and brother all desperate to get at their daughter, that they can't survive without her. It's really creepy and very powerful."
http://www.malthousetheatre.com.au/whatson/beauty.html
