Gulliver
A man sits in thought, hearing the sound of the waves, the ringing of the bell of marker buoy; the third of five sons who went to sea, Lemuel Gulliver was a young man learned in mathematics and navigation, knowledge which perhaps saved him as the survivor of a shipwreck. The blue light of the evening split by a flash of lightning, he comes to himself and recounts the tale of his adventures…
Gulliver’s Travels a satirical fantasy published by Jonathan Swift almost three hundred years ago, Box Tale Soup’s magical adaptation Gulliver utilises both theatrical techniques and puppetry to create not only the strange islands most often depicted in filmed versions, Lilliput and Brobdingnag but also the later episodes of the novel, the subsequent arrivals in the floating island of Laputa, timeless Luggnagg and the Land of the Houyhnhnms.
The props and set shifting around Gulliver, cabin trunks becoming the deck of a ship, flotsam is assembled to become rigging, the split wheel of the ship later becoming the eyebrows of a face of a giant which reveals itself at the back of the stage, each new location confounding Gulliver and undermining his preconceptions of self and his place in the world.
A sailor, a diplomat, a dancer, a firefighter, in Lilliput he is “the Man Mountain” called upon to stop a war then rejected when he refuses to start another, while in Brobdingnag it is he who is dwarfed by even the children, the daughter of a farmer his loyal companion who protects him at court, welcomed in each strange new world when he conforms to the local beliefs then turned on when double standards become apparent.
Swift’s original a work of huge imagination, Box Tale Soup have captured that essence and translated it to a new medium, Noel Byrne, Antonia Christophers and Adam Boyle performing the entire roster of characters against the evolving backdrop, Gulliver a man who changes and grows with every but finds that even as a giant he is unable to change the prejudices of the stagnant societies in which he finds himself.
Gulliver runs at Underbelly Cowgate until Sunday 28th August
