Ever since their brilliant take on Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey at the 2013 Brighton Fringe, duo Box Tale Soup have been reimagining literary classics armed with little more than a trunk of props and puppets.
With G K Chesterton’s novel Manalive they have arguably taken on their most obscure subject yet, and the difficulty shows in the awkward opening moments of this production.
The audience is forced to absorb a lot of information in the opening five minutes as Noel Byrne and Antonia Christophers switch between their own roles and operating puppet characters.
It is only when the loveable rogue Innocent Smith shoots at a respectable doctor that the story takes hold.
The subsequent trial among Beacon House’s inhabitants is a masterful piece of storytelling. Christophers reads out each poetical piece of prosecution from Smith’s past life, ranging from shooting at university lecturers to apparent serial bigamy, before donning ingenious origami accessories built from the defence depositions to reveal the life-affirming reality behind Smith’s actions.
Had the trial been reached slightly faster, with possibly a couple of superfluous puppet characters eliminated, it would make for a perfect entertainment, instead of just a good one.
Three stars
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