MALORY TOWERS

I count myself amongst the generations that grew up enjoying the works of Enid Blyton. Her’s was a world of childhood charm and intrigues. Adventures with the Secret Seven and the Famous Five in a land that could not have seemed further away from the cobbled streets and brick terraces of my own northern childhood had a sense of glamour that was further extended when I moved on to Agatha Christie and Paul Gallico. But as a boy her girls boarding school capers were not a part of my literary landscape, so Malory Towers was an alien genre as indeed were girl’s schools post 11+.

Emma Rice however has been a major influence on theatre and although in recent years I have liked less some of her work, I still chuckle at the brilliance of her The 39 Steps and Brief Encounter and wonder at the beauty of her Tristan & Yseult and The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk.

Some of that magic is there in this campish Blyton confection and the company are truly magical as they take on the roles of the schoolgirls, from the timid to the bully. And the quality of their beautiful harmonies and solos far exceeded the quality of the new songs which were simply knocked into a cocked school hat by the period numbers inserted into the whole.

The tale though is thin, a moral poke at bullying, and how we should all be nice and pull together. And I must add that the audience, mainly female, lapped it up. For those of a certain age, delicious nostalgia but for the youngsters who had been taken along, daughters and granddaughters there was on their faces at the end a look of mystification. Could life have ever been quite so, so… well so innocent and silly?

And sitting as I did trying so hard to be swept along but failing I started to nit pick. Of course some of Rice’s magic was there, the cliff hanger so wittily presented but please oh please, a set with towers of rectangular or even octagonal form onto which a representation of the school clearly with round towers, yes I am a pedant but such a silly mistake.

I wanted to love this more but I didn’t. What I did love was the cast, their singing especially and their enthusiasm, which by act II was certainly more engaging as the flimsy story gradually unfolded. But it is in that flimsy quality that I missed Rice’s real skill, her ability to find humour in Bucchan’s spy yarn or in the middle class infidelity of Laura Jesson with her clipped tones and guilt.

Andrew Kay

22 May

Brighton Festival at Theatre Royal Brighton

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