Reading, writing and regie
The dreaded Regie rears its ugly head in an unexpected venue: a children’s Christmas pageant!
“Humbug teachers at a primary school have come under fire for re-writing this year’s Christmas pantomime of Hansel and Gretel – to make them hooded yobs.
“The fairytale characters have been re-cast as violent thugs who terrorise their neighbourhood and bully people as they hunt for the gingerbread house.” [Daily Mail]
oh god this is a fabulous item!
Squirrel would like to condemn this overt politicization of an otherwise tastefully non-political work. Issues-Based Art must be stopped! (I’d still love to see it, though!)
Waiting for Zeffirelli to weigh in…
Zeffirelli might declare some of the kids unfit to appear in his production of Hansel and Gretel.
Our friends in the US do know that the Daily Mail is a deeply conservative rag that loves to wag its finger anything that challenges the status quo (such as it is) of Middle England.
Sure beats the current Met Opera production; at least this version HAS a gingerbread house.
I never cease to be amazed at the encyclopaedic knowledge and culture of our dear hostess, and her breadth of reading – but….the Daily Mail??!!
Am I the only person who roots for the Witch in H&G? Those brats tried to EAT HER HOUSE!
There have been several productions of Hansel und Gretel, the opera, in the UK that have featured a dreary, threatening urban social setting, including one in which the children disappeared into a wooded park among a colony of homeless.
As the precis of the original story shows, however, Grimm was really grim. The cleaned-up Perrault versions (to say nothing of the super-kitch Disney versions), softened to make them harmless, generally eliminate the raw truth of the original folk tales. In them, life isn’t easy, nature may not be a gentle mother, and punishments are harsh and medieval. They told children that life was hard and to be on their guard. It sounds to me as if that school production was faithful to the author’s original intention.
Down with Humperdinck for taking such liberties with the Grimm brothers!
A simple rule of thumb in this case: if the Daily Mail is up in arms about it, it can’t be all bad. The Daily Mail doesn’t like gays, either.
I’m not aware of any Disney version of HANSEL AND GRETEL.
Humperdinck and his sister librettist did indeed clean up the setting, translating Grimm’s nasty but “practical” Stepmother (who advocates losing the kids in the woods since they can’t afford to feed them) into the careless but loving mother of the opera, who simply exercises bad judgement in a moment of stress.
Still, the opera makes clear that this is not a peachy-keen home environment: Dad comes home quite drunk (probably not for the first time), and they are seriously hungry, if a pitcher of milk was their only choice for dinner.
The ENO under Pountney had a fine updating that was indeed set in a council flat, and the kids did abscond to the nearby park to hunt up strawberries. The spine of the show was the doubling of Mama with the Witch, and the Gingerbread House was a nightmare version of ’50s domesticity – in the very apartment they actually lived in. Drunken Dad snoozed in the corner throughout the crisis.
Tne redeeming charm of the production came during the dream pantomime following the prayer as the kids calle up their Angels – memories of all the people who had ever been kind to them: the cop on the beat, the fish & chips vendor, the mailman, and ultimately their parents in happier days.
It’s a very great opera.
“Why, that dirty old…”