Classic fairytales are popular for a reason. Those which have endured and entered into mainstream consciousness have done so because they touch us in some way. Although, of the over 200 tales the Grimm brothers collected, only around a dozen would be instantly recognisable to your average child (or adult) today. Little Red Riding Hood is one of these.

Any artist who creates work based on known subject matter has two choices. One is to play it safe, comfortable, traditional. The other is to reinvent the material and bring something fresh to the familiar. This is harder. Angela Carter did it with The Company of Wolves (as a short story, radio play, then a feature film!). Others such as Barbara G. Walker have done it with feminist re-workings, others with politically correct ones and so on.

In this regard, Slingsby half succeeded. Their Red Riding Hood was a psychological rather than physical journey. They focussed on internalised fears through some very clever projected images and devices. The playing space was a triangle with the apex pointing upstage. Three projectors threw images on the black curtain walls and a scrim across the front, which acted as a physical ‘fourth wall’ (third in this case).

The pre-recorded images were a standout highlight. These included lovely forest footage with Red as a young girl, a fabulous chase sequence which felt almost 3D and a Blair Witch style direct–to–camera monologue. The strongest image was that of Red waking up on the forest floor. Her red hoodie was the only bright colour in a monochromatic world. It was almost Pleasantville in effect.

The emotive, often loud, sometimes scary score was classical yet crossbred with dark industrial sounds that reflected the different modus operandi of the composer and sound designer. It was a strength of the performance. Like a film soundtrack, it guided us through a range of moods, emotions and sensations; lush, dark, achingly beautiful and occasionally the musical equivalent of a buzz–saw. Every element of the music and sound design gelled.

That said, Wolf felt like a work in progress. There were many disparate elements.

Edwin Hodgeman’s voice-over was beautifully written and delivered, and worked well when played in partnership with the pre-recorded visuals. Occasionally it popped up without the video contrast, or worse, as a couple of lines of transitional dialogue.

I question the need for the text message sequences which bookended the piece. The opening in particular was long and slow and I’m not sure what they contributed.

Halfway through we had a couple of sung moments. These jarred as nothing had suggested we were in a musical.

The vox pops about fear near the end of the play, while interesting and occasionally revealing, appeared from nowhere and shattered the intimate internal world we had been immersed in. The vox pops device, however, is intriguing.

The set design was problematic and not fully resolved. It created an awkward playing space. Projecting onto black cloth is hard work for the audience. I understand it’s a dark piece, but sometimes too much detail was lost. At other times it worked well, such as in the wolf animation.

The biggest weakness was that Ellen Steele simply lacked the strength to interpret the dense script, or to survive amongst the complex technological magic surrounding her. Moments of her performance seemed stylised and others were realism–based. I couldn’t tell if this was a deliberate directorial choice by Andy Packer to use postmodern theatre techniques. Steele’s range was limited, and we often lost her voice amongst the wall of sound. She felt too old to play Red, a girl who was on the cusp of becoming a woman. Additionally, her costume created an issue. The red was striking, but the gap of white between jeans and t–shirt was extremely distracting on such a darkly lit set.

I found myself constantly comparing Wolf to the The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy. In Slingsby’s previous beautiful piece of theatre, the miscellany of little tricks, gimmicks and stylistic bibs and bobs came together to create a multilayered masterpiece. In Wolf, they don’t…yet.

However, they could. If the black set/projection issue could be more successfully resolved, Wolf too, could become a classic.

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