If you missed Emma Rice’s gale-force take on Angela Carter’s final novel when it was performed at the Old Vic back in 2018, you can stream it straight into your living room now we’re all confined to our sofas. Part of the BBC’s Culture in Quarantine season, the play will stream on iPlayer for the next two months. It was Rice‘s second adaption of Angela Carter’s work and it’s very much in the director’s signature vaudeville throwback style.
Two years ago, Time Out’s theatre critic Andrzej Lukowski had this to say about it: ‘Full of bonking and bawdy and wilful staginess, Rice’s adaptation careens forwards on sheer brio, with the Chances played by one set of puppets and three pairs of actors whose genders and ethnicities switch at each turn. ‘Wise Children’ (the play) is a gleefully breakneck night of storytelling.’
Watch it on BBC iPlayer until June 11.