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Show: Little Manfred
Society: Polka Theatre (professional productions)
Venue: Polka Theatre. 240 The Broadway, Wimbledon, London SW19 1SB
Credits: Based on the book by Michael Morpurgo. Adapted by Damian Cruden & Amanda Faber. Directed by Tom Bellerby and Damian Cruden. Puppetry by Marc Parrett. Produced by Soldiers' Arts Academy prior to touring.
Type: Sardines
Author: Chris Abbott
Performance Date: 22/10/2022
Little Manfred
Chris Abbott | 23 Oct 2022 21:09pm
Soldiers Arts Academy provides opportunities for serving and ex-service personnel and their families to have access to the arts and training in performance skills. Their production Little Manfred opened at the Polka Theatre, where a full house enjoyed this touching tale from the book by Michael Morpurgo.
Little Manfred is a wooden toy dachshund on wheels, made we discover by a German prisoner of war, but the play begins in 1966. With some deft time-setting and reference to the World Cup win, we meet two children on a Suffolk beach, Charley and Alex. They skim stones and throw a stick for their dog Manny, until they meet two men. They soon discover that one of these men was a German prisoner of war who was interned in their own farmhouse and knew their mother, and the other was an English naval officer who was involved in rescuing some German sailors after the sinking of the Bismark in WW2. They begin to tell the children the story of the original Manfred, who made the toy.
The 1966 story is told with a combination of human and puppet actors, with the puppets portraying the children and the dog. As the story of events during the War unfolds, we see them depicted by much smaller, detailed and totally believable puppets, on a set which can be transformed from an upturned rowing boat to a sinking battleship. It is the puppetry that is without doubt the greatest strength of the production. The children with their dog convince utterly and engage with the audience quite naturally. As we get deeper into the story, the smaller WW2 puppets stay rightly distant and we quite properly see that story enacted from afar. Puppetry Director Marc Parrett has done a magnificent job.
Morpurgo’s book was based on a true story after illustrator Michael Foreman saw a toy wooden dog in the Imperial War Museum. He brought the story to Morpurgo’s attention, and the book was published in 2011. Once again, this author showed his ability to bring the horrors of war and the need for reconciliation to a young audience. The inventive design for the play by Dawn Allsop is not only totally clever and original but also seems to pay due deference to Foreman’s illustrations.
The script is an adaptation by Damian Cruden and Amanda Faber, and Cruden also co-directs with Tom Bellerby. The result is a sensitive transformation to the stage which works well and benefits from an occasional metatheatrical touch, as when we are told there will be an interval during which we can think more about the story. It is at that point, too, that the cast come out and talk to the audience with the puppets, a much more effective timing than at the end though hard on the actors perhaps.
There are eight actors in the piece with some alternating, listed only as Actors 1 to 10, so it is difficult to comment individually. The main performers are Charlotte Green, Maisie Armah, Harry Lay, Adam Wittek, Tip Cullen and Julie Teal. All are to be commended, especially for their puppetry skills. They consistently and properly act through their puppets rather than just operating them, and they achieve some remarkable effects. The dog Manny was particularly impressive, as was the whole sequence on the Bismark.
The only wrong note for me was the very short sequence with the wartime farmer and wife, where the humour revolved around the fact that they had funny Suffolk accents which the Germans couldn’t understand. Although the actor performing this sequence did it very well, it still seemed out of keeping with the rest of the production to play it for laughs, as did the decision to use two rather more caricatured puppets for these two characters. The script of the play suggests these characters should be more abstract, so perhaps shadow puppets would have been better?  The postscript section at the end with two more actors and set 25 years later also seemed rushed, although the final image of the wooden dog was touching and appropriate.
I assume Little Manfred will be touring after playing for the next week at Polka Theatre, and it is very much to be recommended. Soldiers’ Arts Academy are engaged in important work, and Michael Morpurgo’s work is very well suited to them. See Little Manfred to be engaged, to be touched and to admire puppetry at its best.