Rotherhithe’s newest theatre space at The Hithe is the latest home for Phil Willmott’s Rotherhithe Playhouse Company currently performing The Wizard of Oz and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, writes Ed, Frida and Woody Gray.
Willmott’s intention to bring theatre to the heart of the community has certainly been achieved for us because from The Hithe’s garden we could see Rotherhithe Overground, our flat and the kids’ school within a few hundred metres. To quote Oz’s Dorothy Gayle herself, ‘There’s no place like home’.
We have followed Phil Willmott’s extensive career from fantastically creative productions in the Scoop at More London when our young reviewer’s were toddlers, to more recent work. How often can you see a production of Hamlet at the end of your street? I can still recall the faces of Thames Path walkers confronted with knife wielding Jacobeans. A pandemic production of Dickens’s Great Expectations outside Rotherhithe’s atmospheric Old Mortuary had our young reviewers spellbound by the pure magic of theatre at a time when narrative experiences were reduced to the dimensions of a screen at home, so we were eager to be cyclonically whisked off to OZ as we ascended to the top floor of The Hithe.
Inside is a snug theatre with comfortable enough seating for fifty people. We were a little disappointed that the house lights stayed up throughout the play which took away the intimacy of the collective moment. Narrator Jan Olivia Hewitt played elderly Dorothy as we embarked on young Dorothy’s odyssey to the Emerald City in search of hearts, minds and courage. Creative use of minimal casts, sets, props, and the constant shifting scale between puppets and actors is where the magic of Willmott’s storytelling lies. Dorothy, a puppet ably assisted by Elizabeth Huskisson, was dressed in iconic gingham but with inexplicably oddly cropped hair. Straying from the original story, Olivia MacDonald played the Tinman as a robot who interrupted the action to reveal ‘fun facts’- a somewhat incongruous trope which felt clumsy. Ian MacNaughton, however, brought some laughter to the role of the Lion.
This production will be more familiar to those who know Frank L Baum’s original book so the famous songs from the 1939 film are few. Those that are included were a little under-rehearsed, leading one young reviewer to report that the production was ‘a little wonky’.
All in all it was a wonderful experience to stroll from home and be entertained by a local theatre company, especially when tickets are sold on a pay-what-you-can-afford basis and are free to those accessing food banks or subsidised school meals.
The generous gift of ambitious theatrical experience from cast and director, wonky or straight, will always win over hearts and minds, especially when you can get there quicker than Dorothy can click her little ruby-slippered heels together.
THE HITHE, 71-75 ALBION STREET, ROTHERHITHE, SE16 7JA until 26th February. FULL DETAILS & TICKETS FROM: WWW.MYPLAYHOUSE.UK
