One part empowering tale, one part concert, and one part circus, Tiger Lady has a recipe for a good time.
📍Pleasance Courtyard – Pleasance Above
📅 Aug 4-16, 18-21, 23-29
🕖 1:05pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 1 hour
🎨 Artistic Director: Kasia Zaremba-Byrne
🔨 Designer: Tina Bicat
✍️ Co-writer: Alex Byrne
🎵 Music advice and sound design: Greg Budden
💰 From £6.00 (Preview), £12.50 thereafter
🎂 12+
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilet, Audio Enhancement
Dead Rabbits Theatre take on the life of famed tiger tamer Mabel Stark ( played by Natisha Williams-Samuels) begins as it means to go on, the cast welcoming the audience in early-20th century character, including free shots of whiskey for the willing.
The good times promised soon materialise, as this talented young cast create a world of music, puppetry, physical theatre, and colourful character acting. The audience are recruited at times, en masse, and a few individually, mostly to play the budget defying load of big cats required to populate the story. It’s nothing to scare the participation-wary, just playful fun. You’re at the circus after all.
The necessarily condensed story of Stark is told through a well constructed series of vignettes as she first flees a repressive home to join AI G Barnes’ Circus (Antonio Victorio), first recruited as a dancer, before discovering a passion for training giant felines. A novelty at first, she comes to dominate her chosen field, a titan amongst trainers. She even has a tiger, Rajah who shares her bed.
Around her this talented cast morph from band to character and back on demand. So bravo to (listed in their predominant roles): Abayomi Oniyide (Art Rooney), James Parker (Louis Roth), Chloe Waddilove (Maggie Speaks), and Eddie Breckenridge (Rajah the Tiger).
Williams-Samuels is certainly a lively, and captivating presence on stage. It’s the lynch-pin role and one she is entirely equal to. Her passion to succeed, and for her cats, is a palpable energy which drives decisions and the narrative more generally. It’s an accomplished, and confident performance.
This is an intentionally fun show, a celebration of the achievements of a woman defying stereotypes during a time when such cultural defiance was met with derision or much worse. That said there’s relatively little mention of the harder aspects of Mabel’s life. Indeed, until the play’s closing scene you would be forgiven for thinking she had it pretty good.
Sadly there are few triumphs without hardship and Mabel’s true history wasn’t short of those. There were multiple failed marriages, including her Tiger Lady love interest Art, who may have been homosexual — a quality ascribed to Louis in the play. Louis Roth, a bravura turn from a naturally funny James Parker, was more than her mentor as portrayed, he was also another husband, one lost to alcoholism.
There were also years of exploitation and despicable treatment from circus owners, and several likely attempts to commit suicide by big cat. She would eventually take her own life when aged 78.
It would be impossible to cover all of this inside one hour, but some deeper nod to her trials might actually make the triumphs shine all the brighter. It’s important to note that the show does terminate on a more sombre note, a bold attempt to emphasise at least one catastrophe. It’s an odd note given the otherwise bright tone of matters, and maybe a little more historicity would afford a better landing.
Within the confines of the show, Tiger Lady is nonetheless a tightly plotted, well-paced and fun adventure. The puppetry is simply designed, but tremendously well executed, it gels very well with the comedic physicality of the company and this show. There’s lots to laugh at, the larger than life characters of Mabel’s world channelling just a little Pythonesque excess, but not to the the point of outright silliness. True, she’s the straight-woman to much of the humour, but always the star of the show, the Angela Rippon to their Morecambe & Wise.
One part empowering tale, one part concert, and one part circus, Tiger Lady has a recipe for a good time.
(Image Credit: Dead Rabbits)
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