‘Lionboy’ roars its way to SA
BRITISH theatre company Complicité make their South African debut when they bring Lionboy to the Baxter Theatre. The revival of their hit production for families and young people has been travelling and makes one last stop in South Africa before they return home.
Adapted by Marcelo Dos Santos and inspired by Zizou Corder’s best-selling trilogy of novels, Lionboy fuses storytelling, circus and live percussion, making full use of Complicité’s strengths.
The London-based theatre company was founded in 1983 and has a distinctive visual-anddevised theatre style which places an emphasis on strong, poetic and surreal imagery.
Co-director Clive Mendus was the movement director in the original production, which meant he did a lot of work on the staging and movement of the company around Charlie, who is the main storyteller.
“So when the original director had to pull out I was asked to direct, and I said: ‘I can’t be in it and direct. I need a co-director’. So, we always have an outside eye on what we do,” explained Mendus via telephone from London.
They had just returned from a run in Hong Kong and South Korea. The play is dialogue-heavy and they used sur-titles while in Asia. “It was fantastic, up to 700 people per show and they adored it as a piece of theatre and storytelling and just a nonpatronising form of theatre for children,” said Mendus.
For him and co-director, James Yeatman, the most surprising thing about the South Korean run was that the show was mostly watched by adults, not families like they are used to. “But, they loved it because it was a vital and exciting thing to watch.
“The principle thing is, we try and make good theatre and that’s good for children and adults alike,” he continues. “The source material for Lionboy is a trilogy of children’s books written by a mother and daughter.
The youth element is in the story so it’s about a young boy going off on this amazing adventure. It’s a kind of mad fantasy set in the future. It’s about courage and choice and doing the right thing.”
In order to mount the play they cut several characters from the original source material, and each of the eight actors (the ninth person on stage is a percussionist) play various characters.
They cover most of book one, parts of book two and more of book three, and they do go to Venice as well. “The whole thing is, because it’s based on storytelling you can simply put that into two sentences. You can say: ‘I arrived at the city and was astonished to see how far down into the water it had sunk’. You don’t have to show everything, you can tell as well.”
They don’t travel with a complicated set, it’s more a ladders and rope affair “and the rest of the space we create through lighting and sound. It’s very low tech, very simple to achieve.
“It’s to do with the taste of the original director who didn’t want a complicated technological show, but something simple that could transport easily.”
He’s been working with Complicité on and off for the past 25 years, but it is his experience as a father which has taught him that London has a thriving youth and children’s theatre circuit.
Having to take his young daughter to work she wants to watch, and also now participate in, Mendus has noticed that many of the West End theatres will present theatre for children during the day and an adult production at night, but the only difference is that of audience, not quality.