Joyfully Grimm: Reimagining a Queer Adolescence @ Scottish Storytelling Centre
Joyfully Grimm is a meditation on the hiddenness and in-plain-sight-ness of queer people through time, with a captivating performance and clever script
This is the perfect show to take all your prejudiced friends and relatives to! James Stedman’s assumption of audience sympathy proves so powerful that it feels like he’s talking directly to me, making these stories my stories too. Then again, they sort of are: they're my fairytales too, they're my adolescent worries too. Who's never felt like Rapunzel?
Folk tales were originally for everyone (even bigots!), told by a single storyteller, and this history is reflected in the format of the show – no high production values, no spectacular distractions. The stories are our recognisable friends, tales such as ‘The Frog Prince’, 'Iron Henry' and ‘The Town Musicians of Bremen’. The show reveals their implicit queerness in dialogue with Stedman's history. The show aims to prove with folk tales that queerness has always been around, despite Section 28 and the far right’s efforts to shove queerness to the back of the closet in our lifetime. I didn’t feel that the Grimms' tales, Stedman’s past and the present completely worked as a 1:1:1 relationship – but the sense of history repeating itself, much like tales echoing through centuries, is irresistible.
Nowadays, communal storytelling is rare, and Joyfully Grimm resembles stand-up more than anything else. Stedman can land a joke, but can crucially can also make analogies tangible and focus audience attention on emotional moments. Molly Naylor’s direction, which includes light costume changes and simple but elegant presentation slides, is unobtrusive and supports the object of the show perfectly. Naylor has Stedman cavort when it matters, stay still when it matters, and sit down when the frog is sliding down the wall (see: the show). The emotional punches strike true, and if your prejudiced guest is still prejudiced by the end of the show, you can always try the souvenir badges.
Joyfully Grimm: Reimagining a Queer Adolescence, Scottish Storytelling Centre (Netherbow Theatre), 8, 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, 22 & 24 Aug, 3.15pm, £12-14