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Natascha Metherell
Stephen Unwin
Su Blackwell
‘I started working with paper and with books after I graduated from the Royal College of Art,’ she explains. ‘I cut out illustrations from books like Alice in Wonderland, The Secret Garden, making the characters in their settings. I call them book sculptures, small theatres. I display them in small wooden boxes, they are three dimensional dioramas.’ The miniature scenes are rather like dolls’ houses in their intricacy and accuracy, and in the attention to the minutest detail I suggest. Su, whose work you may have seen in greetings cards and in high profile advertising campaigns, agrees. ‘I work in a very limited scale. I’ve never worked with theatre before, Stephen Unwin [artistic director at the Rose] spotted my work and asked me to do a set! It was quite a risk. But I am loving it and I feel very confident because it’s my vision. This little model is currently with production and they scale it up 25 times so it becomes the theatre set. I leave the practicalities of the stage to them, they are the experts!’
Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen is no pretty-in-pink fairy tale. Like CS Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (influenced, it is said, by Andersen’s own fable), The Snow Queen is a wonderful tale of terrifying contrasts - evil and innocence, summer and winter, warmth and freezing cold. An evil troll breaks a mirror – and the effects are shattering to little children Kai and Gerda, who were best friends until Kai is lured away by the evil Snow Queen...
Directing this dramatisation is Natascha Metherell whose work you will be familiar with if you are a regular Rose visitor. Nat
was Associate Producer of Treasure Island, The Winslow Boy and most recently of The Importance of Being Earnest and now she’s flying solo with The Snow Queen – and seemingly in love with her subject! ‘I was looking for a story that would appeal to little girls,’ she tells me. ‘Very few people know The Snow Queen, it’s not part of everyone’s childhood reading. It deals with very big issues. The little girl is in mourning for her mother, the little boy takes a wrong moral turn and can only be saved by love which will melt the ice that is blinding him. The Snow Queen herself represents death because she represents winter. If you remember, the great battle in Narnia is against eternal winter, against the imminence of death. The Snow Queen likewise is a great fable, a journey through the seasons, to maturity.’
With music and movement, magic and myth, the show is set to take audiences by storm. It’s ideal entertainment for the family and,
with the Rose’s reputation for producing robust theatre to inspire, work that challenges whilst it entertains and makes you think while you gasp, the perfect classic Christmas treat. t&l Written by Sarah Hodgson
The Snow Queen is at the Rose Theatre Kingston from Friday 2 December 2011 to Sunday 8 January 2012 -
www.rosetheatrekingston.org
See Su Blackwell’s work at
www.sublackwell.co.uk
Free story telling for kids A group of travelling players will perform short adaptations of classic fairy tales in story houses throughout Kingston: The Snow Queen Trail runs from Friday 21 November – Friday 23 December. Just turn up – it’s free – and then take your story map to the Rose where you’ll get a gift and a reduced price ticket to The Snow Queen.
Win a family ticket worth £70 to The Snow Queen on 6 December.
www.timeandleisure.co.uk/snow
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