Theatre review: Clockwork

Published on Thursday 14 April 2011 19:06

CLOCKWORK TRON, GLASGOW ****

THE idea that the story is partly about storytelling itself has become common in children's theatre. Just when you think you've seen everything this genre has to offer, though, along comes a tale as sophisticated and magnificent as Philip Pullman's Clockwork, dramatised here as a 70-minute touring opera for audiences over seven.

Set in the little medieval town of Glockenheim, Clockwork is played out mainly in a tavern, where locals gather to tell tales. One tale is unfolding as they speak: Karl, the clockmaker's apprentice, has suffered a creative crisis while making a mechanical figure for the town clock.

Meanwhile, Fritz the storyteller is recounting a macabre unfinished tale about the local royal family, and a related tale about the birth of the prince, some years before.All these stories have themes of technical hubris, and how things go wrong when we try to replace mind and body with ingenious machines. The stories honour humanity, reflect on creativity and love, and on the responsibility of the artist to finish his work.

Douglas Irvine's adaptation is brisk and beautiful, but sometimes over-elaborate in visual detail, as it juggles sets and terrific puppets and strong woodcut-style visual images. The music, though, is never less than entertaining, delivered by a fine cast of three with two on-stage musicians. If the more workaday sections of the score fail to achieve the haunting power of the lost child's song that conjures up the little Prince, this remains a strong and beautiful story, about the responsibility we take on when we set out to create something, and the evil that can flood into the space we leave, if we abandon our task.