Baddies keep kids spellbound MERLIN THE MAGNIFICENT DUNDEE REP UNTIL

4/5

WRITER Stuart Paterson is Scottish theatre's Mr Christmas, with more top-notch adaptations of popular tales to his name than George Galloway has libel-action victories. Dundee Rep are past masters where Paterson's children's plays-cum-pantos are concerned, but they have surpassed themselves with this brilliant staging of Merlin The Magnificent.

You know the story: girl meets boy, boy meets wizard, wizard meets unfeasibly evil sorceress, girl meets extremely helpful mole, enabling boy to pull sword from stone, thereby saving the day. "Hang on!" I hear you cry. "Girl meets mole?" Indeed she does. Nothing's ever quite as straightforward as it seems in a Paterson show.

We shouldn't be surprised, therefore, by the wonderfully innocent idea that, while the supernatural forces of good and evil do battle, it is actually a humble short-sighted mammal who helps the intrepid Gwen to make the all-important intervention.

Although there's nothing new in the notion of simple courage being more powerful than magic (think of Tolkien's hobbits), the Lord Of The Rings never enjoyed the services of a cute burrowing creature wearing glasses and speaking with David Ireland's rich Northern Irish brogue. You can search Peter Jackson's megabucks movies, but you'll never find anything as funny as the blueblooded Gwen's inability to understand the mole's explanation that Arthur has been trapped in a cave (pronounced "cay-uv") by the evil witch Morgana.

The production, directed by regular Dundee Rep actor Robert Paterson, has a good handle on the writer's idiosyncratic comedy; not least in the characterisation of numpty laird Sir Hector (Ian Grieve), his son Kay (David Ireland), who is a mince pie short of a Christmas dinner, and the hilariously pretentious Lady Baffy (Ann Louise Ross). More importantly, the presentation is at one with the author in understanding that it is the mischievous baddies, rather than the saccharine goodies, who really bring a Christmas show to life.

Irene MacDougall (Morgana) and Keith Fleming (the witch's side- kick Face) make the most fabulously evil double act since Elton John and Billy Joel toured together. Do the bad guys in Scottish yuletide theatre have to be from the south of England? It seems so. But never mind, Fleming and MacDougall (who does a fine line in waspish verbal assaults on children) have Dundonian youngsters screaming their lungs out from start to finish.

The scene in which Face befriends the hapless, and, frankly, hopeless, Arthur by seducing him with his sense of fun had the little girl sitting next to me on the verge of apoplexy. Fleming really is the star of the show, and as he used a bed as a trampoline, I feared the child would do herself a serious internal injury. With Arthur preparing to deliver himself into the clutches of the minion of evil, she seemed about to shout herself out of her skin as she pleaded with the brainless king-inwaiting to be more considered in his choice of pals.

As ever with Stuart Paterson's Christmas scripts, the enchantment of storytelling is helped along by a sizeable dollop of comic vulgarity (a number of flatulence gags are let off ). There's also a really tremendous moment of surprise; I won't spoil it for you, but suffice to say I'll be less relaxed next time I take a stroll in a forest.

Lisa Gardner (Gwen), Ewan Donald (Arthur) and John Buick (Merlin) are as sickly sweet as Paterson's almost irrelevant ever-do-wells are apt to be, and Kai Fischer's sets are perfectly poised between stylish theatrics and cartoonishness. All in all, a beautifully balanced Christmas show, and, surely, among the best of Scotland's current winter crop.

Copyright 2004 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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