Christopher Walker reviews Robin Hood at Regent’s Park Theatre
Oh poor Robin. The woke mob has come for him, and hung him on a tree in Regent’s Park. He is no more. He is deceased.
We were promised a ‘bold re-telling’ and ‘the legend re-written. And during this confused production Nandi Bhebhe, who is the closest we get to a narrator, keeps telling us “this is really how it was.”
Except it “really” wasn’t.
Carl Grose the Cornish writer of 49 Donkeys Hanged and Horse Piss for Blood has decided that the English medieval ballad is just not woke enough.
It’s a major act of cultural appropriation.
So Robin himself is ‘really’ Maid Marian in disguise, ‘Little John’ becomes ’Little Joan,’ and Friar Tuck is transformed into Mary Tuck (Elexi Walker) complete with a weed pipe.
The Afro-Caribbean music of the merry (wo)men should be welcome relief, but isn’t.
Wandering aimlessly and never getting going like AI-generated lift sounds.
The best are the ‘baddies.’ Ellen Robertson as Maid Marian, the heavy drinking proto-feminist wife of the Sheriff, and he, Alex Mugnaioni, are a rare high point.
As is the comedy of the three barons (Shaun Yusef McKee, Simon Oskarsson, and TJ Holmes), and Katherine Manners as the Sheriff’s female bodyguard, Sandra.
Charming Ira Mandela Siobhan as Gisburne really doesn’t frighten anyone including the children.
What does frighten them is the gratuitous violence which is way too realistic for an “ages over ten” label.
Forget Romeo and Juliet, if ever any piece required a trigger warning it is this one.
Cutting fingers off, indeed a head at one point, and forcibly blinding people is the stuff of nightmares.
The constant pushing of drugs and foul language also sits oddly in something aimed at children.
What is childish is the “up the workers” politics. Lots of Yorkshire accents (because Hood was “really” Yorkshire by the way), and songs about priapic men stealing the forest from Nature.
A general “eat the rich” feel.
Traditional Robin Hoods appear at interludes to be mocked. We miss them. “Really.”
Tickets: https://openairtheatre.com/
Picture: Alex Mugnaioni (Baldwyn). Photo credits: Pamela Raith.
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