Awful Auntie is not the hoot expected

Awful Auntie, New Theatre, Cardiff ★★★II

ON the face of it Awful Auntie has everything going for it.

The hugely successful book written by David Walliams has taken on theatrical form courtesy of Birmingham Stage Company – maestros at bringing children’s books to life.

So far so good then, but my family were left oddly emotionally uninvolved in this story of a young girl who does battle with a very Awful Auntie.

When the young lady in question Stella sets off to visit London with her parents, Lord and Lady Saxby, she has no idea her life is in danger. Waking up three months later, only her Aunt Alberta can tell Stella what has happened.

But not everything Aunt Alberta tells her turns out to be true and Stella quickly discovers she’s in for the fight of her life against her very own awful Auntie.

As the book is set virtually entirely in an old mansion in the middle of the night, the chilling gothic feel of the story is ramped up, thanks to an ingenious set courtesy of stage designer Jacqueline Trousdale, however, the limitation of location feels one-paced in a first half where the story doesn’t especially move with any great pace or hook you in.

This despite the best efforts of Timothy Speyer as the eponymous Auntie, who is a larger-than-life presence throughout. The first half also finished unexpectedly to the point where the audience weren’t actually sure it had come to an end.

Thankfully the second half was an altogether different proposition and jolted the audience out of any state of inertia with lots of knockabout fun by the ensemble cast including a boy ghost called Soot, an owl named Wagner and a nicely staged car chase.

There were, however, scant belly laughs and the comic relief expected from batty butler Gibbon (played by Richard James) were decidedly hackneyed and not especially funny.

Awful Auntie is a show that can’t quite decide whether it wants to appeal to children, young adults or their parents (the fact that 12-year-old Stella is played by an actress twice her age may contribute to this) – and ultimately ends up lost in its own indecision.

by David Owens