Emma Rice’s new project gets off to a puckish start

Wise Children Old Vic, London

Emma Rice’s first venture since leaving the helm of the Globe, a time so full of back-stage drama it warrants a theatrical treatment in its own right, is like a joyously vengefulgleeful tap routine.

“Girls Just Want To Have Fun”, the company sings at the end of her adaptation of Angela Carter’s final novel, Wise Children, adding the book’s closing line – “What a joy it is to sing and dance!” And that sounds like the mission statement for her new company (which takes the same name) and a riposte to the Malvolio killjoys at the Globe.

Carter’s swansong is a shaggy-dog story-cum love letter to the stage and Shakespeare – especially the latter’s bawdy, illicit side. Its twin heroines – Dora and Nora Chance – are like castaways, an air of fantasy hovering over their music-hall antics, make-doand-mend days and survivors’ tales of south London.

The whimsical, oddly flimsical theatrical-family saga – conjured in arch, cockney septuagenarian reminiscences that ballet-leap back across the century – works better on the page. On the stage, its supposedly natural milieu, the lack of pulsequickening drama is hard to conceal.

Rice throws her customary puckish invention at the impressionistic jumble. Familiar eccentrics from her erstwhile troupe Kneehigh cavort.

Frustratingly bereft of dramatis personae outside the dysfunctional Chance/hazard clan itself, half a dozen actors share the two leading roles at different ages. As a consequence, it’s the smaller turns that have a keener edge.

At the risk of party pooping, I’d proffer the adage: less is more.

‘Its twin heroines are like castaways, an air of fantasy hanging over their music-hall antics’