This review is from the 2024 Edinburgh International Festival.
The lady sat next to me at the latest outing from animated theatre legends 1927 had never seen one of their shows before and I more or less had to scrape her jaw off the floor at the interval. I think it is important to acknowledge that what the Suzanne Andrade and Paul Barritt-led company does is basically incredible. Their mix of stylised live actors and Barritt’s gorgeous pre-recorded animations is like nothing else out there and I think it would be extremely foolish to take it for granted.
That’s not a roundabout way of saying ‘well actually their new one isn’t that good’. But I just think that to a large extent it is important to stress that the main reason why any 1927 show is good is that they have a totally singular aesthetic and they pretty much always nail it. Seeing a newcomer to the company having their mind blown was a real reminder of what it was all about.
What ‘Please Right Back’ is in fact about is Kim (Chardae Phillips) who lives with her animated brother Davey (voiced by Davey Patrick Copley) in a rundown looking estate with their mum (Jenny Wills). As for their Dad, aka Mr E (Stefan Davis): as the show begins, Kim is reading one of his letters, detailing his James Bond-like exploits as he attempts to track down a briefcase that has been stolen from him by the nightmare bowler-hatted animation The Big Man; adventures that will later go on to include a tangle with a Mancunian lion, a trip to a tropical island, being swallowed by a whale, and more.
What is of course apparent to us but not to Kim is that dad is not doing any of this stuff; eventually a creepy support worker played by Lara Cowin tells Mum she has to stop covering up the fact Dad is in prison.
Based on writer Andrade’s own childhood experiences, ‘Please Right Back’ – which is co-directed by Andrade and Esme Appleton – is a moving and open-hearted work by the company’s usually arch standards, though also fuelled by the same anger at social injustice that flares in some of their previous outings. It’s perhaps a little unwieldy, that might have flowed a bit better if it had lost the interval and a bit of the second half. But it’s also at its heart very lovely, a poignant and imaginative coming of age story that sees 1927 dabble with something distantly approximating realism and coming back with impressive results.
