Award-winning theatre company Tall Stories bring a celebration of Oscar Wilde’s lesser-known work to Coventry’s Warwick Arts Centre this festive season...
Oscar Wilde is best known as a playwright - thanks to such enduring fare as The Importance Of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband and Lady Windermere's Fan - but he also penned a number of fantastic fairy stories, all of which have been overshadowed by his frequently performed stage plays.
"The fairytales are not very well known,” says actor Tom Jude, who’s presently working on two Wilde productions for theatre company Tall Stories. “I think he’s just thought of as an adult author - and in fact, many of his fairytales were indeed written for adults. He wrote them to tell to his friends at parties. They’re moral lessons and are quite unflinching.”
Tall Stories’ acclaimed productions - Wilde Creatures and The Canterville Ghost - are the latest in a long line of shows by one of the UK's most successful and predominantly family-focused theatre companies. Formed in 1997, their biggest hit has been their phenomenal adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's The Gruffalo. They’ve since turned several other Donaldson & Scheffler picture books into plays (The Gruffalo's Child, Room On The Broom and The Snail And The Whale), as well as creating productions based on stories by Edward Lear (The Owl And The Pussycat), the Brothers Grimm (Car And No Mouse), David McKee (Mr Benn) and Lemony Snicket (Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming). Meanwhile, their own original productions have been inspired by everything from artificial intelligence to time travel.
Despite their association with Donaldson & Scheffler, it was Wilde who gave the company their first hit, when they debuted The Happy Prince And Other Stories at the 1997 Edinburgh Fringe. And it’s to this princely tale that the company have returned for Wilde Creatures.
"The story of The Happy Prince ends with the townsfolk arguing over who should be the next statue in the town square, who’s the most important person - and we’ve taken that as our starting point," explains Tom, who was raised in Rugby and has worked with Birmingham Rep, Birmingham Theatre Company and the RSC. "Our story starts with a band of musicians arriving in town. The mayor appears, and he’s planned to put up a statue of himself. He talks about this empty space in the town square where The Happy Prince statue used to stand. When it had lost all of its jewels, they pulled it down, and in its place the mayor’s going to put up a statue of himself, as he thinks he’s very important.”
The travelling musicians - played by Tom, Matt Jopling, Steve McCourt and Lauren Silver - discover that there could be other potential candidates for the honour. Suggesting friendship as the first of several admirable qualities worthy of a civic monument, the cast recount Wilde's The Devoted Friend, featuring a miller who believes he's the perfect friend.
Great knowledge is proposed as another honourable trait, so the story of the learned student from The Nightingale And The Rose is also retold. Perceptions of beauty are then explored in the tale of the attractive young princess from The Birthday Of The Infanta.
“These people are suggested as candidates for the statue,” says Tom, “then, at the end, we ask the audience to decide.”
Of course, these being fairy stories, Wilde presents a seemingly positive attribute but then flips the notion to reveal a very different story: a character can be beautiful yet also cruel; friendly yet inherently selfish and inconsiderate; knowledgeable yet unworldly.
“The stories start with us being told who we should admire, but those people are really shallow and there’s always somebody else, usually a victim, usually the moral character, who is more admirable - and quite young children absolutely get that,” says Tom, who first performed the play to school audiences and was surprised by responses during post-performance Q&As. Recalling chatting to young pupils, he explains: "In terms of who they admired, it was the usual movie stars, pop stars, superheroes; they admired people because they were good singers or strong athletes. But without any prompting, some would just say the names of their friends - which was really nice - or their parents, or other adults they admired from clubs they attended, like their karate teacher.”
Published in 1888 and 1891 in the collections The Happy Prince And Other Tales and A House Of Pomegranates, Wilde's fairy stories have failed to enter the popular imagination in the same way as other traditional tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Hansel And Gretel.
“To be honest, I don’t know why they’re not better known,” says Tom. “The Selfish Prince and others are very, very strong and clear stories, quite easy to tell. There’s a lot in them. We should tell them to our children more.”
Alongside Wilde Creatures (aimed at youngsters aged five-plus), the same cast turn their attention to Wilde's comic fantasy, The Canterville Ghost - a rare Tall Stories production for older and adult audiences. Telling the story of an American family who move into a haunted house and proceed to give the resident phantom more than he bargained for, Tall Stories once again take a unique approach to presenting Wilde’s work.
"We’ve framed it as a night at a Victorian music hall,” explains Tom. “The four of us play musical performers; one of us plays piano, one is a compere, Lauren is a psychic and I’m an illusionist. And each of us plays one of the characters in The Canterville Ghost too, and between the chapters we do our acts.”
For Tom, visiting Wilde’s worlds has been an inspiring experience, revealing inventive stories peppered with colourful characters both real and fantastic, tempered with darkness and light, a strange otherworldliness and comedy aplenty: “I just think they’re beautiful,” he says, “utterly beautiful and moving. They have a great richness, moral depth and heart.”
Tall Stories present Wilde Creatures at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, until Sunday 30 December, and The Canterville Ghost at the same venue from Tuesday 18 to Sunday 30 December.
Award-winning theatre company Tall Stories bring a celebration of Oscar Wilde’s lesser-known work to Coventry’s Warwick Arts Centre this festive season...
Oscar Wilde is best known as a playwright - thanks to such enduring fare as The Importance Of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband and Lady Windermere's Fan - but he also penned a number of fantastic fairy stories, all of which have been overshadowed by his frequently performed stage plays.
"The fairytales are not very well known,” says actor Tom Jude, who’s presently working on two Wilde productions for theatre company Tall Stories. “I think he’s just thought of as an adult author - and in fact, many of his fairytales were indeed written for adults. He wrote them to tell to his friends at parties. They’re moral lessons and are quite unflinching.”
Tall Stories’ acclaimed productions - Wilde Creatures and The Canterville Ghost - are the latest in a long line of shows by one of the UK's most successful and predominantly family-focused theatre companies. Formed in 1997, their biggest hit has been their phenomenal adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's The Gruffalo. They’ve since turned several other Donaldson & Scheffler picture books into plays (The Gruffalo's Child, Room On The Broom and The Snail And The Whale), as well as creating productions based on stories by Edward Lear (The Owl And The Pussycat), the Brothers Grimm (Car And No Mouse), David McKee (Mr Benn) and Lemony Snicket (Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming). Meanwhile, their own original productions have been inspired by everything from artificial intelligence to time travel.
Despite their association with Donaldson & Scheffler, it was Wilde who gave the company their first hit, when they debuted The Happy Prince And Other Stories at the 1997 Edinburgh Fringe. And it’s to this princely tale that the company have returned for Wilde Creatures.
"The story of The Happy Prince ends with the townsfolk arguing over who should be the next statue in the town square, who’s the most important person - and we’ve taken that as our starting point," explains Tom, who was raised in Rugby and has worked with Birmingham Rep, Birmingham Theatre Company and the RSC. "Our story starts with a band of musicians arriving in town. The mayor appears, and he’s planned to put up a statue of himself. He talks about this empty space in the town square where The Happy Prince statue used to stand. When it had lost all of its jewels, they pulled it down, and in its place the mayor’s going to put up a statue of himself, as he thinks he’s very important.”
The travelling musicians - played by Tom, Matt Jopling, Steve McCourt and Lauren Silver - discover that there could be other potential candidates for the honour. Suggesting friendship as the first of several admirable qualities worthy of a civic monument, the cast recount Wilde's The Devoted Friend, featuring a miller who believes he's the perfect friend.
Great knowledge is proposed as another honourable trait, so the story of the learned student from The Nightingale And The Rose is also retold. Perceptions of beauty are then explored in the tale of the attractive young princess from The Birthday Of The Infanta.
“These people are suggested as candidates for the statue,” says Tom, “then, at the end, we ask the audience to decide.”
Of course, these being fairy stories, Wilde presents a seemingly positive attribute but then flips the notion to reveal a very different story: a character can be beautiful yet also cruel; friendly yet inherently selfish and inconsiderate; knowledgeable yet unworldly.
“The stories start with us being told who we should admire, but those people are really shallow and there’s always somebody else, usually a victim, usually the moral character, who is more admirable - and quite young children absolutely get that,” says Tom, who first performed the play to school audiences and was surprised by responses during post-performance Q&As. Recalling chatting to young pupils, he explains: "In terms of who they admired, it was the usual movie stars, pop stars, superheroes; they admired people because they were good singers or strong athletes. But without any prompting, some would just say the names of their friends - which was really nice - or their parents, or other adults they admired from clubs they attended, like their karate teacher.”
Published in 1888 and 1891 in the collections The Happy Prince And Other Tales and A House Of Pomegranates, Wilde's fairy stories have failed to enter the popular imagination in the same way as other traditional tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Hansel And Gretel.
“To be honest, I don’t know why they’re not better known,” says Tom. “The Selfish Prince and others are very, very strong and clear stories, quite easy to tell. There’s a lot in them. We should tell them to our children more.”
Alongside Wilde Creatures (aimed at youngsters aged five-plus), the same cast turn their attention to Wilde's comic fantasy, The Canterville Ghost - a rare Tall Stories production for older and adult audiences. Telling the story of an American family who move into a haunted house and proceed to give the resident phantom more than he bargained for, Tall Stories once again take a unique approach to presenting Wilde’s work.
"We’ve framed it as a night at a Victorian music hall,” explains Tom. “The four of us play musical performers; one of us plays piano, one is a compere, Lauren is a psychic and I’m an illusionist. And each of us plays one of the characters in The Canterville Ghost too, and between the chapters we do our acts.”
For Tom, visiting Wilde’s worlds has been an inspiring experience, revealing inventive stories peppered with colourful characters both real and fantastic, tempered with darkness and light, a strange otherworldliness and comedy aplenty: “I just think they’re beautiful,” he says, “utterly beautiful and moving. They have a great richness, moral depth and heart.”
Tall Stories present Wilde Creatures at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, until Sunday 30 December, and The Canterville Ghost at the same venue from Tuesday 18 to Sunday 30 December.