Now what would you call a play which has an evil leprechaun, a witch on the look-out for the leprechaun, a damsel in distress who is helped by the leprechaun with evil intentions and three humorous ministers who always have a pun to share? A grand aural treat!
Rumpelstiltskin was yet another play presented by the Landing Stage, a theatre group, to a jam-packed audience comprising more of teenagers and kids.
The play was staged on three days between May 23 and 25, 2008 at Alliance François, Nungambakkam
Even though the targeted audience of the play was kids, there were more of teenagers and adults present who equally enjoyed the play on all the days. The play marked the directorial debut of Aashirwad Vishwanathan Anand. It was the script-writer Dushyanth Gunashekar’s debut too. The play was also co-directed by Aruna Ganesh Ram who had previously directed ‘Kingdom of Fools’ and ‘Aladdin and his magic lamp’.
The story revolves around Rumpelstiltskin (Vidyulekha Raman), a leprechaun created by the evil witch Diavola (Punya Srikanth) to be her slave forever. But when Rumpelstiltskin escapes from Diavola, with evil intentions he helps a young girl called Bella (Anusha Venkatraman), who gets trapped in her father Glutton’s (Ujwal Nair) web of lies so that she marries King Gier (Suchith Vasudevan).
The play also marked Anusha and Ujwal Nair’s debut in Landing Stage. Ujwal, who is also a prominent part of Chettinad Players, played the lead role in Bhishma-an epic staged by the Chettinad Players earlier.
Fifty four days of severe rehearsing was showed in the play as the young actors diligently portrayed the literary characters from the story by the Brothers Grimm. The main highlights of the play were that of the three king’s ministers a.k.a Blossom (Susan Abraham), Bubbles (Radha Sunder) and Buttercup (Prarthana) who always escaped being beheaded.
The other highlight was that of the entrance of Diavola who stormed into the stage from the audience’s main door leaving everybody spellbound. The eerie sight of Rumpelstiltskin prancing around a cauldron (enhanced by red stage lights, courtesy: Vicky) makes you feel you ought to give full credit to Deepan for choreographing the flamboyantly vivacious steps. Vicky, who was in-charge of the stage-lights, drew the audience’s attention by changing the colors of the light for every scene and made the play look more vivacious. He is a part of Masquerade, another English theatre group.
Incidentally Rumpelstiltskin is the smallest cast Landing Stage has ever had with more people backstage than on stage.
Landing Stage is currently working on another project, which will be staged sometime in July.