Peter and the Wolf - Tobacco Factory

Prokofiev’s classic tale of a small boy who takes on a wolf with the aid of his friend the bird is one of the essential landmarks of any fully-rounded  childhood.  Most of us encounter it in recorded form, with narrators ranging from Peter Ustinov to Bono, since performances are all too rare.

However, Little Wolf Gang - a small band of strolling players - offer Bristolian children (and their parents) a chance to experience the work live, albeit in a stripped down version.  The symphony orchestra is replaced here by just three instruments: violin (Fiona Barrow), Eddy Jay (accordion) and David Adams (bassoon - and the voice of Peter’s grumpy Grandfather).  This tiny ensemble provide the musical accompaniment to Martin Maudsley’s engaging and vivid narration of the tale; waddling like a duck one minute, twisting to represent a gnarled old willow tree the next, he fills in the picture outlined by Prokofiev’s music.

Bookending this musical main course are two other Russian folk tales set to music.  The disconcerting ‘The fiddler meets a devilish stranger’ allows Barrow’s violin full rein to plunge into a carefree circus of polkas and mazurkas.  The outcome of ‘A foolish woodcutter discovers a magical wishing tree’ can be guessed from the title: foolish people granted wishes rarely come off well in fairy stories. With the rolling repetition of a classic storyteller, Maudsley is gripping has he tells the story to the backing of Ravel’s Bolero.

Little Wolf Gang’s show is a pleasant introduction to some classics, both spoken and musical.  It may not be utterly engaging for the very young, but I know at least one 9 year old who hummed Peter’s theme all the way home.

Walking the Chains - Passenger Shed, Temple Meads

Marking the 150^th anniversary of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Walking the Chains is an ambitious attempt to present the Bridge’s (troubled) past and present through a blend of ‘verbatim’ theatre, dramatisation and circus performance.

The core is provided by twin storylines of the struggles of I.K. Brunel (Tom Wainwright) to get the Bridge built in the first place, and a tour guide (Cassie Webb) leading a present-day huddle of tourists along the Bridge.  Scattered through these two narratives are the reminiscences and observations of those who work on the Bridge today and a selection of incidents from the Bridge’s history.

Wainwright’s Brunel is a sizzling bundle of ambition and energy, an unstoppable force of nature striding the stage waving his cigar and top hat.  As the tour guide, Webb delivers the diverse Bridge-related facts which pack the show with great charm. Yet there is something lacking in this production, and the end-result is somewhat fragmented and sometimes dry.  The cause may lie with the subject matter.  Unlike A.C.H. Smith’s previous celebration of Bristol, Up the Feeder Down the Mouth, which told the story of Bristol docks by capturing the warmth of a community, this piece focuses on a work of civil engineering: chilly stone and metal. For all the affection we may feel for it, the Bridge does not have soul.

There are also some technical flaws in this production. The staging on a runway with banks of audience facing one another across the lengthy performance area can lead to a seriously cricked neck and a sense that some of the action is happening a very long way away.  The sound system also struggles at times to cope with the challenging acoustics of the Passenger Shed.  And in the oral history segments the script often appears to stick too slavishly to the actual words of those who originally spoke them, falling the wrong side of the fine balance between dramatic and verbatim.

Walking the Chains does not offer the spectacle or the warm personal engagement that one might have hoped for.  But it is undoubtedly an easily digested encyclopaedic presentation of everything you ever needed to know about the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and hometown-loving Bristolians will delight in its celebration of our iconic landmark.