Twisted, Dark & Funny - The Magic Hour a New Take on Fairy Tales
UpStage at the Playhouse presents Lulu Bell Productions’ The Magic Hour, written and directed by acclaimed Newcastle playwright Vanessa Bates, starring internationally award-winning actresses Louise Chapman and Jan Hunt with original live music written and performed by popular and accomplished local singer-songwriter Amy Vee.
Described as Little Red Riding Hood meets Trainspotting, The Magic Hour is a dark take on Grimm’s fairy tales, where Jack’s beanstalk grows in his drug-addicted parent’s backyard and Rapunzel’s tower is atop a housing commission high-rise. With black humour, white hot rage and a magical, musical joy, this all-female cast will present a series of disturbing, yet comedic stories connected by song, Ross Mueller’s filmic soundscape and Lyndon Buckley’s lighting design.
The production has been inspired by the stories of real women, encountered by Vanessa when she worked with marginalised people on arts projects. On one such project, based at a notorious housing commission estate dubbed "Suicide Towers” and “Murder Central”, she unexpectedly ran into Louise Chapman, who she had studied with years before at the University of Newcastle. The experiences that the two women consequently shared, has enriched the emotional impact of the piece, coming as it does from a place of very harsh reality.
“…the play uses the structure of fairytales but has a grittiness to it,” said writer and director Vanessa Bates. “A while ago, I did a lot of work around the country with people on the edge of societies, and often I would meet extraordinary and inspiring women – ordinary mothers and grandmothers who worked so hard to keep families together. They were often in the background, and it occurred to me that many of the female characters, the mothers and so on in fairy tales are kept in the background too”
Original fairy tales were about bravado, fortune, destiny and courage. But always, watching from the edges, were the quiet ones. The bit characters. The weary mothers, the ugly sisters, the irrelevant queens, the grandmothers.In The Magic Hour, they get their chance to shine.
This 2024 life can seem a harsh one; a post pandemic world with growing climate-change, cost of living, wars, homelessness, fake news, mental instability, AI and social media consequences.
What is left to matter?
Well... Love matters. Kindness matters. Caring matters. And Courage matters. And because of all these things, or perhaps at the start of all these things… Stories matter.
UpStage at the Playhouse presents Lulu Bell Productions’ The Magic Hour at the Playhouse Civic Theatre Newcastle 21-30 November 2024. Co-published with Currency Press, the Manuscript / Program is on sale with show tickets from:
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