Review: The Animals and Children Took To The Streets – Latitude Festival
A run-down tenement, swarming with cockroaches, arts clubs, collages and children roaming free. No, not a summary of the Latitude Festival camp sites but 1927’s festival steeling performance of their latest work The Animals and Children took to the streets.
Showing that their thrilling Between the Devil and The Deep Blue Sea was more than a one off, 1927 return with a sublime mix of music, animation, drama and comedy, cementing their growing reputation of one of our most accomplished and inventive theatre companies.
Reminiscent of those jerky Eastern European animations, mixed with film noir, cabaret and dark comedy, we follow life in Bayou Mansions on Red Herring Street, a life that offers little hope and little chance of escape. Into this run down work walks Agnes Eaves, determined to improve the mansions by use of collage. Agnes’ enthusiasm is the only brightness in this dark land, a land where the Mayor is planning to solve youth crime but handing out drugged gumdrops to sedate the streets children.
Suzanne Andrade’s script is brutally true to life, full of well observed detail brought to vivid life by Paul Barritt’s evocative animations.
As with their previous show, 1927 seamlessly combine actors into these animations with pinpoint accuracy. Forget wearing glasses in a cinema, this is the real deal for 3D animation.
Performed with total conviction by Suzanne Andrade, Esme Appleton and Lillian Henley, this is a master class in how genres can be blended to create a unique and totally engaging piece of total entertainment.
The mayor’s doctored ‘Grannies Gumdrops’ may leave a sour taste in the mouth but 1927s The Animals and Children Took to the Streets will only leave you with the sweet taste of success. As the raptious reception in the Theatre Tent attests, this surely takes the award for outstanding theatre production at this years Latitude Festival. Totally sublime.
The Animals and the Children took the Streets, Trailer from Paul Barritt` on Vimeo.
