Review: The Gingerbread Mix-Up

The centre of affairs in writer Martin Murphy and director Richard Croxford's distinct, intimate and off-the-wall The Gingerbread Mix-Up is a girl named Primrose, played by Rosie Barry. But she's neither prim nor a rose.

She is, instead, a hyperactive bratty beggar, a monstrous child who's losing her soul to a video game and eating her parents out of house and home.

When her mother's patience finally snaps, Primrose is (not very subtly) tricked into being left alone in the woods, with only her Nintendo 3DS and "Bandor, Master Of Neverworld" to keep her occupied.

But, before she can finish Level Four, she is interrupted by cat-turned-witch's assistant Pardon (Kyron Bourke, adapting his Big Bad Wolf from last year's Little Red Riding Hood) and tempted along to his mistress's Gingerbread House. The trouble is that said witch (Christina Nelson) enjoys dining on children, and hasn't had little girl in a long time.

As a story, The Gingerbread Mix-Up is essentially Hansel and Gretel with no Hansel and an especially spoiled, gluttonous Gretel. Were she not to eventually mend her ways, at least to a point, you might even call Primrose a Goldilocks. (Yes, she's that bad.)

What Murphy and Croxford do is give the whole thing a mildly sinister, humourous, Roald Dahlian sensibility, with chattering, singing little animals (don't worry - they're only puppets!), a witch who isn't as wicked as she thinks and we know she is, and a good-hearted serf destined for redemption.

Audience participation is loud, clear and frequent. We recite spells and do magic movements with the witch. (If we don't, we're told, she'll turn us into frogspawn.) When she can't figure out a way to vanish, she cheats - we close our eyes for a couple of seconds and she's no longer onstage. All while Primrose is wondering where her sweeties and cola will come from (like the alien in Mac and Me? Heaven...), enjoying a great Who's On First moment with Pardon, and then having a screeching competition a la Father Ted (but with no rocks).

The Gingerbread Mix-Up is like that throughout - we get to enjoy inspired comedy, inventive antics and no fourth wall, along with the story of the witch figuring out how to use her spells, Pardon unearthing unexpected courage, and Primrose escaping the witch's clutches.

If that were all, it would be a very good show. But there's also a smorgasbord of genre-crossing tunes from the idiosyncratic Ursula Burns, not to mention remarkable set design from Alyson Cummins. The gingerbread house itself is a colourful marvel - were they real, one would be as tempted to nibble at the cream cake walls, lollipop flowers and candy window frames as Primrose is.

Yet what really sets The Gingerbread Mix-Up apart from other Christmas shows of the year is character. Murphy and Croxford have dug deep and planted a kind of humanity which attains more power than any epic panto this season has.

Primrose herself is Everybrat turned Everygirl in all her ugliness, naivete and resourcefulness, and Rosie Barry nails the part with astonishing energy. I love her performance. I love Christina Nelson and Kyron Bourke, too, as the ashamedly soft-centred witch and the sheep in wolf's clothing, both of whom inadvertently reform the bad girl that comes between them. From initially looking out for themselves they unintentionally serve as Primrose's surrogate parents (no surprise, then, that Nelson and Bourke play Primrose's mother and father too), thus we warm to them.

In that regard, The Gingerbread Mix-Up is a special show on many levels. And it might even be argued that, with its story's emphasis on greed, image and promises of better things that aren't likely to be, The Gingerbread Mix-Up is actually a fine pastiche of the latter half of 2016.

Simon Fallaha

The Gingerbread Mix-Up runs at Belfast's Lyric Theatre until January 7 2017.