'Disenchanted' is a collection of songs that take the side of fairytale characters who feel they’ve been misrepresented and whose real stories have been overlooked by history and folklore. This is their chance to put the record straight.
For this show
we visit the 17th Century of salon of Madame d’Aulony, known as the ‘Godmother
of Fairy Tales’, for a subversive reinterpretation of some of old favorites (Madame
d’Aulony was the one who originally coined the phrase ‘fairy tales’ or contes
de fees).
As a one woman show, Morel carries the plot
and the music by herself, switching costumes and scenes with the help of her partially
slightly unreliable ‘magic mirror’ (effectively a Renaissance version of Zoom,
complete with glitches and Wi-Fi outages).
Normally, this show would all be
on the stage (as it was in Fringe Festivals in Adelaide and Sydney) but because of you know what, it’s all online. She must instead, perform to a screen that
gives back nothing, which must be hard for an actor used to a live response. She delivers a plenty of witty one-liners and
throwaways that, on stage would bring the house down. Alas, on video they do fall a little flat,
with no interjecting laughter or audience response, it does feel a little flat. Morel has to engage her audience with an exaggerated
effort, a bit like the way presenters work on children’s TV like ‘Play School’,
leaving space for silent laughter. We
saw this recently on tv programmes like the Late Show with Steven Colbert, who
was forced to perform from his apartment instead of the studio during Lockdown. Without people, it fails somewhat. Comedy like this really needs warm bodies to
shine.
Still the
music helps, and once you get over the initial format cringe you can really
settle I and enjoy.
Morel’s
mission is to bring these well known fables into the 21st century – and we are
reminded of the sad realities with must that we must all now live with. She very cleverly dispels the myths of these
fairytales with her often debauched modern twists. It should be pointed out that these are not
for children. There are some R16
moments.
She plays
all the characters with more than feminist touch.
“In my
stories, girls are trying to escape Aristocratic beast, not chase after
them!’ Madame d’Aulony tells her own
story of how she escaped an arranged marriage by getting her intended sent to
the Bastille for treachery and tax evasion.
She has skin in this game.
It’s funny
how some of the real-life fairy tales like the Weddings of Charles and Diana or
Andrew and Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew have now been dissolved over time,
as we learn the truth behind them. It
seems the facade hides what really happened when Cinderella married her Prince
Charming. On that, Cinder’s story is
told from the perspective of Olga, a disgruntled stepsister, who bears more
than a passing resemblance Samantha Markle and her madcap ramblings about Megan
on cable TV. Olga and her sister, it seems are pipped by the activities of
their stepsister, who after the wedding, instead of welcoming them to the
palace has employed them as the Royal’s laundry mistresses. We see a disgruntled Olga explaining this in
song (sung to the tune of ‘Those Were Days, My Friend’), whilst sitting in a
trashy backstreet laundromat, commenting about the golden couple’s recent abdication
to escape the paparazzi and wondering if Prince Andrew is still available to
date.
Jack and
the Beanstalk also gets a bit of a twist, with puns intended. As the liberated goose that lays the golden
eggs, Morel assumes the personality of the ‘egg-cited’ bird and sings (in
egg-ceptional voice) about how Jack climbed the beanstalk to rescue her and her
loudmouthed mate, the Magical Harp. In
the process she fills us in on what really happed during Jack’s escape and how
the giant really dies. As this ‘eggs-pose’
unfolds we learn how the recently liberated goose ditches Jack once the big guy
s out of the way to set up her own golden egg laying business. She figures she’s sitting on a goldmine, why
not exploit it!
What could
be next. Of course, it’s Mr Wolf (oddly
from Transylvania – no explanation why) and that pesky girl – Red Riding
Hood. This time, she’s re-appropriated
the song ‘Perhaps, Perhaps’ to argue why this wild canine is misunderstood.
Wolf wasn’t eating Granny at all. Well,
not literally. More carnally, if you get
my drift. There’s a scandalous cover-up that
hides the truth behind the Wolf’s murder.
It turns out the wood-cutter is innocent after all!
It’s all
deliciously playful and subversive. But
watching this with the backdrop of the Ukrainian invasion feels particularly
uncomfortable right now. The Russian/Middle
European accents hammer home the point - Is the Wolf Putin or Trump? Or Us? Did we let him in win, despite his charm
and big ears?
Then there’s
the ‘date rape’ #metoo version of the “Sleeping Beauty” fable seen through the
eyes of a comatose princess molested by her future prince. Prince Charming turns out to be a creep who
takes advantage of girls sedated under the influence of charms and spells. Is this Prince Andrew, Harvey Weinstein, or
any male in a position of power turning a vulnerable situation to their advantage?
The art, backgrounds
and animations bring this performance to life, and there’s a real hint at the theatre
that Morel was aiming at when she performed the show live. They’d done their best with the high-quality
production, and that softens the blow. She
uses all the familiar tropes of pantomime and story telling to deliver. While the online version doesn’t really show Morel
at the height of her powers Disenchanted is still a brilliant show and a nice
distraction from reality for an hour – and a talking point for the next virtual
water conversation.
CoffeeBar Kid
