DREAM CATCHER
Christmas is surely a time for catching dreams, packaging them up in pretty ribbons and sharing with friends young and old. This co-production between Blue Moon Zoom and Castle Special Needs School here in Cambridge certainly brought some much needed festive cheer to audiences around the country. Written by director Mhari Gallagher and Craig Baxter, the simple tale of magical daydreaming was affecting and doubtless much enjoyed by its young spectators albeit wholly via Zoom.
Using the multiple-screen capabilities of Zoom (one including a wonderfully animated British Sign Language interpreter) the story unfolds over a breezy 70 minutes. The goodly Story Book Fairy (Amy Castledine) has the happy ending of her tale stolen by the (relatively) evil Story Thief (Ben Nealon). The malevolent (mildly) top-hatted baddie has one aim in his forest-bound, friendless life: to ensure that all stories end badly. Central to the story is young Rosie (Leonie Spilsbury) who must get ready for a Zoom party but inexplicably keeps falling asleep (the hypnotic work of the, you guessed it, Bad Hatter - Rosie is the dormouse here). Cue the Fairy’s helpers aka the children of Castle School who must try to wake Rosie with a tickling feather or loud calling. Enter Rosie’s mum, the nearest thing here to a panto dame played with rasp-voiced, drag-kitted verve by James Hirst. She is baby sitting but has time to have comical moments with squirting milk bottles, a rogue vacuum cleaner and a very noisy nappy-filling doll. Suitably low comedy continues with Rosie mis-making a creamy cake – an essential ingredient of any kids’ show.
The narrative (slightly wayward but who’s counting?), was punctuated with jolly songs and a lovely dreamy rendition of ‘Sky Full of Stars’ by Joseph Littlewood, a pupil from the Castle School. The actors certainly gave their all. Amy Castledine has perfect diction and a face supercharged with expression. The same goes for Leonie Spilsbury – bright eyed and packed with actorly energy except when sleeping. Ben Nealson navigated the tricky sandbanks of scary baddie who is easily transposed later into Mr Nice Guy. James Hirst brought many welcome tropes of trad panto to the narrative.
Though we all really miss the incomparable magic of live theatre on a full stage, this Zoom production hit the right notes with its target audience. I would have liked a touch more theatricality but realise this is very difficult to do given the limitations of social distancing and, no doubt, budgets. But that said, Dream Catcher had genuine charm, actorly energy and colourful costumes. This kind of show can never replace the real thing but the message of the story is apt: we can, and should, dream dreams. When sleepy Rosie finally comes round, let’s hope our wonderful theatres have woken from their cruelly imposed slumbers. Book Fairy, get ready!
