If Carrie and Tess of the D’Urbervilles can form the premise of a musical, then why shouldn’t the folk story of a Baba hosting spirits in her house with chicken legs?
Les Enfants Terrible’s adaptation of the children’s / YA novel by Sophie Anderson is definitely a musical. It includes beautiful melodies conveying the loneliness and hope of young heroine, Marinka (played by Eve de Leon Allen), who is caught in a limbo life between connecting with the living and hosting the passage of the dead in her elderly Baba’s home. As she sways on a rope swing outside of her House with Chicken Legs, singing “Oh What I’d Give for a Friend”, the scene is complete.
Charming design by Jasmine Swan that frames action from a fairytale and commonplace reality is a lynchpin of the production, alongside moreish music by Alexander Wolfe and sophisticated video design by Nina Dunn. Visual segues of the night-scape that friendly souls travel through on their journey’s end are memorable and captivating.
The presence of actor-musicians lends to the whimsy and warmth of the chocolate-box set comprising revolving homestead with transforming moving parts. Yet, there are a few puzzling pieces in the jigsaw of this production.
The performance begins with a showstopper of a folk ballad, "Baba Balalaika’s Intro". All at once, we are welcomed into the whirl of Marinka’s Grandmother’s drinking, dancing, carousing with the dead. It’s toe-tapping, head-waggling and rapid as a pint of ‘Trost’. But sadly, we can’t hear the words. The soundtrack is so amplified that any acoustic support and lyric meaning is lost in a frenetic din. As a result, it is challenging to fit together the unusual elements we are presented with: dancing dead, teenage angst, geriatric mysticism.
Without the context of verbal storytelling, we are a little at sea. It is only when Marinka slows the action down and delivers her solo on the rope swing that the rules of this story world are made clearer. There is also a desire from this member of the audience to hear more of the musicianship promised by the instrument-wielding ensemble.
Pace is a theme of The House with Chicken Legs, as it’s a show of contrasts. Sequences in which Baba or Marinka’s otherworldly friend, Nina, played by Elouise Warboys, tell their stories are slick and perfectly held in the show’s episodic structure. Conversely, the bluesy showstopper in Southern American Yaga’s house is seductive but is, like the opening Baba number, too drawn-out.
Despite these imperfections, the audience’s humanity is fully tugged at in this aesthetically delicious tale of living life in the shadow of death. This is especially true when the plot kicks into gear—the end of first-act twist is exquisite.
In total, the sum of this show’s parts should be much greater than the individual talents showcased. As it stands, more trust in the remarkable cast to lead and carry the piece, aside from audio-visual magic, would go a long way towards fully capturing the audience. It has remarkable legs.