Cahoots NI have knocked it into the
park forest with their latest production
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1797 ballad
Der Zauberlehrling, Charles Way’s imagination has let rip and written a story about a town of wooden houses at the edge of a forest which is home to a sorcerer who looks out for them (and enchantingly delivers birthday presents). Approaching the winter of his life, he needs to hand his role and powerful spells across to a younger member of the community. Not every apprentice works out, but there’s a spark about young Gunda which gives her an inner integrity amid her mistakes.
There are a lot of components to capture the attention of young audiences. There’s Phillipa O’Hara’s Guanda, a grumpy teenager with loud music playing in their headphones who lives in a poverty with her working mum (Orla Gormley) and injured DIY-incapable Dad (James Grimm). Gormley and O’Hara’s singing brings huge warmth to the tale. The movement and use of a toddler Gunda puppet is an early emotional highlight in the production.
Step into the forest and puppetry brings an owl, a fox, and many more creatures to life. Soon it’s bewitched household objects, leading up to a scene in which teacher Miss Fumble (a bewigged Christina Nelson) defies gravity in a child-pleasing scene of classroom mischief.
O’Hara leads much of the storytelling, backed by Score Draw’s original music which runs throughout the production. The rhythm and timbre isolates moments of peril from hope. Nimshi Kongolo’s sorcerer is wise and never stern, a figure of opportunity who values redemption over banishment.
“… no success without failure … it’s all in the balance”
An earlier apprentice Marit lurks in the forest trying to throw off her young pretender with temptation and threat. Jennifer Hague’s vocals during her cello-backed solo were electric.
Director Paul Bosco Mc Eneaney is a past master at delivering seamless production effects with a skilled team, many of whom have worked on previous shows. It’s almost as if lighting designer Simon Bond has a giant iris between the audience and the performers controlling how far back in the stage we can see. (Spoiler: blue lights pointing towards the audience constrict our pupils along with haze, massive amounts of experiences and rehearsal, and the story directing our gaze elsewhere!) It allows the talented puppeteers (Iris Schmid and Emily Essery along with other cast members) to work out of sight, for larges props and pieces of set to disappear, for machinery to slip in for some of the larger practical effects, and even for one character to disintegrate in front of our eyes.
The vision of a ghosting flying on the back of another animal is going to be hard to forget. The effects may wow, but they’re never allowed to stand out in front of the story. A single falling snowflake or a smoking chimney on a miniature house can be as meaningful and effective as the larger chicanery. As the sorcerer says: “a mix of imagination and concentration, it’s very combustible”!
It’s an entrancing story which deals with themes of jealousy and not being cool, as well as grief and taking responsibility. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is longer than some of Cahoots NI’s previous productions and the interval may have been a welcome toilet break for some audience members, but the break in story-telling unsettled others.
Having already played at Buxton Opera House in June, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice continues its run in Cahoots’ Cityside HQ until Sunday 25 October as part of Belfast International Arts Festival (many of the remaining shows are sold out) before heading across the Atlantic to New York’s New Victory Theatre in January.
Photo credit: Melissa Gordon
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