The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig is a
children’s story (an obvious subversion of the traditional
“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your
house down” tale) written by famous Greek author Constantine
Sandis and staged by Sandis Productions, to tie in with the
coming Greek Festival. Apart from the author of the tale being from Greece, there
are, however, no other connections to Greek culture, modern or
ancient, and it may seem like a strange choice of production for
this event. It is certainly true that this play will provide something for
children in regards to the festival, but apart from that, its
appeal seems somewhat limited. This is not to say that the production is not fun in places.
The story has been adapted into a musical using, quite bizarrely,
the music of The Village People and this creates some moments of
confused enjoyment. However, the replacement lyrics run out of any original puns
and rely mostly on panto-style jokes very early into the songs
which were not helped by the fact that few of the actors can
sing. Outside of the songs, there are also some funny moments. The
character of the Mother Wolf (Nina Reizi) is really quite
entertaining, but apart from this, the lack of originality in wit
and concept lets down what could have been an amusing
performance. It is, however, perhaps too easy to slate such a production
for the qualities that its target audience, children, will be
amused by. When the three little wolves start twirling their
tales around to YMCA, I am sure that the under tens will be
rolling on the floor with delight rather than cringing behind
their pashminas, and its fun and energetic cast definitely carry
the performance along with aplomb. This does not, however, excuse
it for being a panto cunningly disguised as something else. When all is said and done it is very difficult to know exactly
what is the purpose and proposed audience for this really rather
odd performance. Go if you fancy a mindless, childish but
essentially fun production, but even then be prepared for this
play to be very, very weird and not what you expected at all.ARCHIVE: 1st week TT 2004
Three Little Wolves
