It is an exciting morning: For the first time I but also my assistant mini-reviewers are visiting the Unicorn Theatre, since 2005 only a few walking minutes away from both London and Tower Bridge. All three of us have committed to confront our arachnophobia this Halloween season (“there is an upside down bucket on the floor of the tiles, can you deal with that?”). Aside from that: The spider Anansi is a known character to all of us but neither of us is able to recall a single fable of this trickster legend. Let’s get to work, I mean, let’s head to theatre.
The paw prints on the foyer floor are an instant hit, the posters of other shows are being read and observed with plenty of attention: “Can we see The Three Little Pigs as well please next time?” There is admiration for the Quentin Blake mural on the way down to the toilet, and also for the prints promoting kid-friendly activities across London. The Unicorn Theatre’s own Anasi-flyer with its quizzes and poster will sure be part of this year’s autumn decoration, don’t miss it!
Filled with anticipation we enter the venue’s Clore Theatre where floor cushions and benches make small and big visitors feel at home: “Can we take our shoes off?” “Sure, we only have been on the train this morning…” But the question echoes quickly through the round auditorium – we clearly set a trend here, and then need to have a discussion about how neither eating nor laying down in a theatre with real actors and using your jacket as a blanket is not polite. The show will last less than an hour, so we agree that not doing this indeed is manageable. Yes, Thames picnic after the performance is promised.
Three fabulous narrators (Cynthia Emeagi, Becky Sanneh and Elizabeth Peace) introduce us under the calming and exciting tree canape to three stories of Anansi, back from when animals were still walking on two legs. While there is no visual depiction of creatures, every storyteller will take a turn of being Anansi. We hear the sounds, songs and snores of jungle and savannah wildlife. Percussions and drums, ropes and clothes, cauldrons and confetti – all types of props bring these West African, African American and Caribbean legends of wisdom, survival and cheating, of winning and losing, for fifty minutes alive. There are shocks and cackles, snakes, goats and armadillos, village girls, famine and food and feasts, and there is dad-dancing and blackmailing, reason, FOMO and regret – whatever it needs to achieve. Anansi gets back up on his eight feet every time, no matter how fatal he has been hit.
When asking, what their favourite part was, the 8-year-old says the drums and the songs (beautiful harmonising indeed), the 7-year-old says high-fiving the actors and sharing wisdom with everyone. As it is with all wisdom: If you know, you know. With the Unicorn Theatre aiming to reach audiences up to 13 years old since 1949 (!), we’ll be back for sure. Aren’t we all a bit Anansi?
***** out of 5 stars
Written by Justin Audibert, directed by Robin Belfield
Tickets from £16.50, playing until 16 November
Sadie takes the Stage 