Drama gyntaf Mari Izzard, enillydd gwobr Violet Burns, sef gwobr The Other Room i ddramodwyr ifanc yw ‘Hela’. Lleolir The Other Room y tu fewn i dafarn Porters yng nghanol dinas Caerdydd, a rhaid cyfaddef fod y theatr hon yn em fach, gyda’r  cwmni’n enwog am ei chynyrchiadau heriol ac arbrofol sy’n eithafu’r defnydd o’r gwagle bychan a hynny mewn amryw arddulliau. Disgwyl yr annisgwyl, dyma ddiben y theatr fach yma, ac nid yw’r ddrama hon yn eithriad.

Mae’n rhan o drioleg o’r enw ‘The Violence Series’, sef arlwy The Other Room ar gyfer y tymor hwn. ‘Hela’ yw’r ddrama olaf i’w llwyfannu yn y gyfres yn dilyn ‘American Nightmare’ gan Matthew Bulgo a ‘The Story’ gan Tess Berry-Hart.

Drama llawn cyfrinachau yw ‘Hela’. Mae’n agor gyda chymeriad Hugh sydd wedi’i glymu a’i gaethiwo mewn ystafell lom, dywyll. Ei herwgipiwr yw Erin, merch ifanc sy’n ymddangos yn blentynaidd ar yr wyneb ond sy’n meddu ar dueddiadau seicopathig beryglus. Mae wedi cipio’r gŵr a’i garcharu yno mewn byncer diflas. Ar y cychwyn, nid ydym yn sicr beth yw ei chymhelliant ond yn raddol drwy gyfres o gemau plentynaidd a chreulon, mae Hugh yn cael ei arteithio am resymau penodol.

Set syml ond effeithiol sydd i’r ddrama – un ystafell a drws i fyd anelwig. Mae Erin yn defnyddio’r allanfa yn achlysurol, sydd yn fodd o newid tempo’r ddrama drwy fynd a dyfod gydag offer arteithiol gwahanol. Er llymder yr ystafell, mae technoleg yn amlwg yn rheoli yn y byd dystopaidd hwn. Mae amryw sgriniau yn chwarae rôl y trydydd cymeriad, sef ‘M’, sy’n rhoi’r wybodaeth ychwanegol i ni ynghylch dwyster y sefyllfa.             

Mae’n amlwg fod gan y cymeriadau gefndiroedd cymhleth – Hugh wedi cael magwraeth anodd ac yn rhan o gylch ‘grwmio’ plant, ac Erin yn hiraethu ar ôl diflaniad ei phlentyn saith mlwydd oed. Daw’r thema o hela felly yn glir i ni’r gynulleidfa. Mae yntau wedi hela Gethin, mab saith mlwydd oed Erin, sydd nawr yn dod wyneb yn wyneb â realiti erchyll y sefyllfa.

Roedd y rhyngweithio rhwng y ddau actor, Lowri Izzard a Gwydion Rhys, yn argyhoeddi, gyda sawl eiliad o densiwn anghyfforddus. Wrth i’r stori ddatblygu, cawn ddiweddglo arswydus a threisgar gydag Erin yn dial. 

Drama ddwyieithog yw hon gydag Erin yn siarad Cymraeg a Hugh yn deall ond ychydig o’r iaith. Serch hynny, mae yntau fel ni’r gynulleidfa yn medru gweld y cyfieithu yn digwydd ar y pryd ar y sgrîn drwy gydol y ddrama. Er bod hyn yn gyfrwng diddorol sydd wedi digwydd mewn amryw gynhyrchiad arall eisoes, efallai bod sylw gormodol i’r cyfieithu ar brydiau. Efallai byddai llai o esbonio yn fwy heriol ac awgrymog ar adegau er mwyn dyfnhau’r thema. 

Gosodwyd y ddrama mewn cyfnod dystopaidd, anrhefnus gydag Erin nid yn unig yn dioddef colled ei mab ond hefyd colled enbyd ei hiaith a’i threftadaeth.  Nid thema newydd yw hon wrth gwrs, gan ein bod ar hyn o bryd yn byw mewn byd cyfryngol ac ieithyddol peryglus.  

Hoffais y deunydd o sain drwyddi draw a oedd yn creu awyrgylch annymunol a pheryglus yn ogystal â’r goleuo pŵl. Er bod hon yn ddrama anodd ei gwylio ar adegau, mae’n llwyddo i hoelio sylw’r gynulleidfa o’r dechrau i’r diwedd.    

Os gewch gyfle, ewch draw i weld ‘Hela’ yn The Other Room, ond os na chewch gyfle y tro hwn, bydd y drioleg yn mynd ar daith yn y Gwanwyn. 

Following its rousing success with The Play That Goes Wrong, Mischief Movie Night and The Comedy About A Bank Robbery, Mischief Theatre are back with their unique take on J.M. Barrie’s Christmassy classic Peter Pan, which descends into utter chaos in what might just be their best show yet.

The poster warns us that this is not a pantomime – indeed, an increasingly irritated Captain Hook (Connor Crawford, in one of three excellent performances) reminds us of that fact, even as we the audience gamely reply ‘OH, YES IT IS!’ – but there’s enough magic, musical numbers and mishaps to be considered one. The comedy starts even before the curtain rises, from the hilarious programme (including an in memoriam section for Nadia the crocodile) to the bored-looking stagehands roping in audience members and fusing the whole theatre trying to light a few tiny lamps. The gang have crafted something of a stage-bound MCU – a Mischief Theatrical Universe, if you will – in which their hapless cast and crew from “Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society” slowly descend into chaos and madness: their inventory of onstage oopsies include malfunctioning tech, sets on the verge of collapse and all manner of bungled staging, line deliveries and prop mishaps – and it’s a deceitfully clever, canny formula that runs like clockwork.

The whole cast is an incredible, fine-tuned machine of mischief and they all work so hard – though perhaps none so toilsomely as thespian troupers Oliver Senton and Phoebe Ellabani. Senton plays the over-enthusiastic AD, Nana the Dog, and a particularly unintelligible pirate who sounds like those blokes from Hot Fuzz – but perhaps his best moments come when he inhabits – nay embodies – the role of Peter’s Shadow, which is worth seeing the show for alone. Ellabani has maybe the most divergent set of roles, impressively swapping between the genteel Mrs Darling and family maid Lisa in seconds – not to mention pulling double (quadruple?) duty as Tiger Lily and a fabulously chaotic Tinkerbell. Senton and Ellabani also share perhaps my favourite scene: the one where Senton-as-Nana gets stuck in a door, and Ellabani-as-Mrs-Darling attempts to sing a moving lullaby as the technical team bring out a workshop-worth of noisy power tools to drill him out. You have got to see it for yourselves.

This is the kind of show which wouldn’t work if there was even a single weak link, and everyone in the cast is simply brilliant. One of the standouts is Tom Babbage as Max, a lovelorn actor who was only cast because his rich uncle funded the hapless production (revealed by the malfunctioning sound system). Babbage brings an Andrew Garfield adorkableness to the role, sweet and so sympathetic that he had the entire audience on-side and cheering for him to succeed (his triumphant crocodile dance is perhaps the cutest thing these eyes have ever seen). His unrequited (or is it?) love for Sandra is one of the loveliest aspects of the show, and, as the dance-loving Wendy Darling, Katy Daghorn brings the kind of delightful exuberance only generally found in the end of term school production.

Ciaran Kellgren as Jonathan aka a deliciously smarmy Peter Pan in whose flying sequences gets swung about more ferociously than Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball. Even Ethan Moorhouse’s stolid stagehand Trevor gets roped in (and strung up – literally and figuratively) when the chaos starts taking out cast members, including the timorous Lucy aka Tootles (Georgia Bradley), one of the many victims of the structurally-unsound set. Romayne Andrews as John Darling gives a gloriously stilted performance as an actor so apathetic his lines – not to mention Classic FM and the shipping forecast – are being fed to him through anachronistic headphones. His line deliveries are an utter joy – matched only by the delectably dramatic narration of Patrick Warner as Francis, the ill-fated master of ceremonies who punctuates his tale by throwing glitter and growing increasingly afraid of his seemingly-possessed chair. Connor Crawford is particularly great as Captain Hook (and he’s clearly enjoying his stylish pirate costume – the way that coat moves!) but as Mr Darling he delivers a perfect homage to Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein (you’ll know it when you see it).

The revolving set is spectacular – split into three segments that artfully represent numerous locations including the Darling nursery, Hook’s pirate ship, Pan’s woodland hideout, a moonlit London skyline and more, it’s a gorgeous feat of ingenuity that even a tide of technical issues can’t hide. Although it’s not a musical it still boasts some brilliant musical numbers like a rousing sea shanty on the Jolly Roger and a poppy group number about imaginary feasts. There’s also a truly visually striking scene in which Peter and Wendy go for a swim in the Neverland lagoon, and the set transforms into a spectacular evocation of the ocean depths in which neon sea-creatures frolic and glide. They still manage to wring out its comic potential (not least a lights-up reveal as to how they achieved said effect), but it doesn’t dull the polish of the scene’s creative beauty.

Mischief Theatre’s marvellous modus operandi is fast becoming as beloved as theatre tropes and
traditions on which it gleefully riffs. Peter Pan is a story so familiar to us
that we know the plot beats, the characters and the lines even as the production
falls apart at the seams – and there is joy to be had in watching people desperately
striving to remain sane while the world collapses around them. It takes pinpoint
precision to look this imprecise, and Mischief Theatre have got it down to a
fine art. It’s a show for people who adore theatre and even those who aren’t so
keen – because every tradition, trope and trapping is lovingly ribbed in that creative,
entertaining and endearing way that Mischief does so well. I was lucky enough
to see this production with my grandpa, who dubbed the show ‘the best theatre
experience I’ve ever had’. It’s a show you shouldn’t miss and won’t forget.

Peter Pan Goes Wrong is playing at the New Theatre, Cardiff through Sunday 10^th November.

The story behind Frankenstein’s creation is nearly as mythic as the tale itself: eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley, dared by Lord Byron and her husband Percy Bysse Shelley during that fateful summer in Geneva, dreamt of a young scientist staring in horror at the fearful creature he brought into being, and subsequently penned one of the most timelessly influential works of literature.

With countless adaptations of the classic tale over the years, and even more just inspired by it, it’s difficult to envision how a modern interpretation could evoke the same subversive quality as it did in its inception – or even warrant its existence in a sea of Frankenstein reimaginings. To my surprise and delight, this new version, penned by the acclaimed Scottish writer Rona Munro and directed by Patricia Benecke, is a bold and radical reworking that earns its place in the pantheon through ingeniously inserting Mary Shelley into her own story. Although in reality she plotted out her book in great detail, here we get to see Mary think up the book in real time – perhaps not historically accurate, but an innovatively metatextual way of watching the creative process unfold.

As Mary Shelley, Eilidh Loan is a crackling lightning strike of charisma; brash, snarky and devilishly charming, she wields her pen like a magic wand and has the audience in the palm of her hand. I just love the way she takes up space: her Gentleman Jack swagger-and-style (that long black leather coat!) is captivating, her frantic real-time thought-process compelling, and it’s refreshing to see a woman so joyously aware of her own genius. She’s a Regency Fleabag, dragging us through the fourth wall into her world, making snide comments about her own characters and gleefully twirling the strings of their fate like a Romantic-era Deadpool – in many ways, her brazen delight at the gory demise of her cast makes her as bloodthirsty as her own monster.

It’s a quirk that might seem trite in lesser hands, but it makes sense: the women of both Frankenstein and Shelley’s world were pawns, prisoners and victims of patriarchal control and/or male-perpetrated violence, but Mary Shelley was a woman who smashed through the binaries in which society had boxed her – breaking centuries-old societal conventions was just a regular Tuesday for her. So, to set her in the midst of her own story, to give her the reins completely in the telling of her tale, feels like a natural extension of her work and a compelling tribute to such a revolutionary woman – plus, it injects female agency into a story which is (in)famously bereft of it. Sometimes, Mary’s asides slightly dull the dramatic edge of the proceedings – but the characters and plot beats are so familiar that it was refreshing to see them reinvented in a new light. Maybe Mary wouldn’t quite express herself in the way this version of her does, but her fierce rebellious spirit is made of the same stuff.

Loan is so commanding that the other characters in the play often feel just like that: characters, archetypes, shadows of Shelley’s genius mind. This is Mary’s show, and she won’t let you forget it – which, for my money, works, but perhaps that’s because I know and love the novel so much that simply to portray its plot from point A to point B would seem almost too basic at this point. The central conceit, of Mary inviting us into her writing process as she shapes the characters, is experimental enough to risk the cohesion of the tale (which it just about avoids breaking) whilst also speculating as to Mary’s thoughts and motivations in writing it. It’s a meta deconstruction of Frankenstein as much as an adaptation of it, and the original framing device reanimates a well-worn story into something fresh and unpredictable.

Despite Mary’s dominance, the ensemble is brimming with talent and carry the story with ease. In a shocking turn of events, I found Victor more sympathetic here and the creature less; Ben Castle Gibb’s interpretation of Dr F is rather heart-breaking, even if the love story between he and Natali McCleary’s Elizabeth never quite convinces (it doesn’t work for me in the novel either, to be fair). Michael Moreland’s ‘Monster’ (as he is credited here) is effectively animalistic in his performance, although doesn’t appear as overtly monstrous as the characters’ reactions might suggest. His monster is less elegantly eloquent as his on-page counterpart, but he excellently delivers the play’s best line (which, to my recollection, isn’t in the original): ‘despair was the first gift you ever gave me’.

The rest of the cast is energetic and gamely inhabit Frankenstein’s sprawling character list. Thierry Mabonga is tasked with the most variable cross-section of roles, playing Victor’s hyper younger brother William, his genial bestie Henry Clerval, and (a particularly imposing incarnation of) Captain Walton. As Victor’s long-suffering fiancée Elizabeth, Natali McCleary is saddled with one of the novel’s least meaty roles yet still infuses the character with kindness and charm; however, she shines particularly as Safie, a Muslim woman who leaves home in pursuit of true love, and whose newfound family is spied on by the creature from afar. Greg Powrie and Sarah MacGillivray convince as the domestic parade of paternal/maternal figures who influence Victor and the creature, even if their multiple roles are rather thankless.

In a play that so unabashedly celebrates a woman’s accomplishments, it’s wonderful to see so many women in key roles in the creative team. Munro’s script is sharp, witty and inventive – she also wrote the compelling Rebus: Long Shadows which I reviewed for Get the Chance earlier this year – and Benecke’s dynamic direction ensures the story whips by at breakneck pace. But it’s the production design that makes the show truly unmissable: Becky Minto (who also designed the costumes!) has crafted a, spectacular, visually stunning and gorgeously symbolic set which doubles as an abandoned stately home, an Arctic-bound ship, and the internal tapestry of Mary’s mind all in one. The set is skeletal, adorned with spindly trees that variously evoke spines, vines, and veins – and which, in a delightfully inventive novelty, the actors climb as the action moves between the two tiers. The gorgeously Gothic atmosphere is augmented by Grant Anderson’s effectively-Frankenstinian lighting and Simon Slater’s eerie music/sound design.

Some reviewers suggest that the play emphasises the ‘morality tale about unfettered science’ angle of the text at the expense of its contemplation on moral responsibility, but I beg to differ. From where I was sitting, the play focuses almost entirely on the latter whilst throwing the scientific cautionary tale out the window – and is all the better for it. After all, we never learn the exact workings of Victor’s reanimation process, and the condemnation of him playing God or mistreating his ‘patient’ relates to the larger themes of humanity’s shared responsibility in the creation of monsters. Munro herself interprets Frankenstein not as a cautionary tale about unchecked science, but rather about inequality – an interpretation I really feel gets to the heart of the story.

Of the monster’s two creators, Mary is the more attentive and empathetic to the being for whose existence she is responsible; she listens to his story, touches him with kindness, and talks to him like a human being. Mary’s rage at the ‘great men’ who abuse their authority is powerfully tinged in shades of #MeToo – but the script leaves enough room for nuance and ambiguity that lends itself to multiple readings, not least Mary’s implied anger at her distant father William Godwin, who easily meets the requirements of the ‘great men’ she condemns. The real monstrous act is failing to take responsibility for the things you create – indeed; to renege on that responsibility is particularly heinous when one has the privilege, means and status that others lack. Victor does not only fail as a father and as a scientist, but as a human being.

This new version of Frankenstein is a refreshingly creative take on a familiar tale. It’s meta approach to the Gothic makes it feel like a mashup of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Young Frankenstein (I can give no higher praise). As Mary Shelley surmises near the play’s close, ‘vengeance is a monster’; perhaps here, the very novel Mary crafts is her last (or first?) act of vengeance against the myriad foes who have wronged her. This may be just the latest in a litany of adaptations of Shelley’s genre-defining masterpiece, but it’s also an invigorating take on the source material that demands to be seen – and it’s just the thing to get you in the spooky mood this Halloween week. Frankenstein is playing at the New Theatre through Saturday 2^nd November.