“…a clever, and charming translation of Johnson’s beautifully illustrated story from page to stage.” Jo Timmins gives voice to Richard Johnson’s wordless adventure, Once Upon A Snowstorm.
📍Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 9 Dec to 23 Dec
💷 From £15 (multiple tickets discounted)
🕖 Varies by day, check when booking
🕖 Running time (approx.): 45 minutes
🎬 Director/Adapter: Jo Timmins
🎶 Composer: David Paul Jones
🎩 Dramaturg: Iain Reekie
❕ Based on the book by: Richard Johnson
✂️ Designer: Sophie Ferguson
✂️ Lighting Designer: Emma Jones
🎂 5-8
🎭 Thu 15 Dec at 6PM is a relaxed performance
Published in 2018, Richard Johnson’s Once Upon a Snowstorm has a fair claim on the tag of ‘modern classic’. The story of a boy separated from his father amidst a snowy wilderness, it’s an adventure told with beautiful illustrations, and not a single word. Quite a challenge then, for Director Jo Timmins of Lyra (who are producing the show alongside Catherine Wheels), to bring the tale to the Traverse stage.
The QR spoke with Jo Timmins in the run up to opening night, click here to read.
It would likely be impossible to recreate the beauty of Johnson’s imagery on stage, so Timmins wisely chooses to paint her pictures in the audience’s minds. Instead, storytelling forms the core of this charming two-hander, led by actor and fiddler, Fay Guiffo as The Boy and Adam Tompa (who shares the role with Michael Sherrin across the run). Props are kept to an admirable minimum, the stage enclosed by a white textile cavern, within it only the two performers and a sweet model house.
The show’s opening is wonderfully atmospheric, as the lights fall to reveal the illumination within the little homestead. It’s spine tingling as the twin performers tell of the boy and his dad inside, the winter storm outside, and of the boy’s gazing out from the windows in the world beyond. Guiffo’s fiddle sings to create eddies and shapes in the blizzard, her strings offering wordless beauty to conjure echoes of the imagery being evoked. Composer David Paul Jones certainly summons a wintry landscape betwixt simple glissando across Guiffo’s strings , and a sighing synthetic backing track.
A little of that sense of mystery is lost when the two performers take on their character mantles, exchanged for a merry sense of adventure as boy meets bear. Perhaps, thinking of its young target audience, not too much is made of The Boy’s isolation, nor is there any true sense of peril. However, the show strikes rather the lovely note when introducing our young hero, to the various woodland animals with whom he will share a night in the wild.
Through a delightful mix of physical acting, music, song, and carefully chosen words, the audience is surrounded by quite the host, from a mischievous racoon, to svelte fox, and even mice (only known by requiring everyone else to jump to let them pass). However, it is the bear with whom The Boy bonds, part friend, part surrogate father. In ursine mode, Tompa proves a very loveable ally, and as he and The Boy gamble about the audience, there’s evident delight amongst his captive host of young admirers.
Designer Sophie Ferguson offers a few surprises along the way, ably assisted by Lighting guru Emma Jones, from cleverly illuminated stellar constellations, to painting the cave walls with light shaped through cut out lamp shades. It may be impossible to create a visual feast akin to the book, but there’s definitely a simple elegance to proceedings.
All in all this is a clever, and charming translation of Johnson’s beautifully illustrated story from page to stage.
Photography Credits: Mihaela Bodlovic – unless otherwise stated)
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