Grimm stories for festive fun

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of us all?" goes the question in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Best known as a panto alongside the likes of Aladdin and Cinderella, Snow White is one of some 200 fairytales committed to paper by brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Now a selection has been brought together under the title Tales from the Brothers Grimm to form this year's Creation Theatre Company Christmas show.

Appropriately enough, in view of the vital question asked of the mirror in Snow White, Creation are staging the show in the Mirror Tent used for several of their previous productions.

Tales from the Brothers Grimm is devised and directed by Gari Jones, who was also responsible for last year's rip-roaring Arabian Nights. Meeting Gari during a lunchtime rehearsal break, he told me that all those Grimm fairy tales were first culled into a list of those that were likely to be a box office draw, then the choice was his.

"I had a very long short list, so I thought: That could work quite well with that'. The stories segue into each other, it's all very intertwined.

"One of the stories is called The Star Girl and it ties in with a handful of other stories, which are all quite similar. They're about how we treat death, and the place of the child in the world, so that's quite a strong strand that runs through the whole piece."

All of which sounds quite a long way from the panto version of Snow White, I suggested.

"Absolutely. I suppose it's trying to treat things sensitively, and not just make it all a lot of crazy nonsense. I don't think that is always very interesting, and I suppose the dark side of it is something for the adults rather than the kids.

"I've put all the stories down on the page in their simplest form. Then I've added a level of the tales being told by a group of storytellers, which adds an improvisational element. A lot of the comedy will come out of that. A lot of the original stories aren't that funny, and there's not a lot to them when you put them down in their bare bones. So you have to be creative in other ways within each story. But it will still be Snow White and the dwarfs - and they are quite silly dwarfs!"

Bringing the show to life will be the job of the seven-strong cast. As the actors wolfed down their microwaved lunches (judging by the rehearsal sequence I watched, the production is not going to be short of physical action), I asked Alex Beckett whether he had been regaled with fairytales as a child, and whether they had been an influence on his decision to become an actor.

"My parents never read me Grimm, it was Hans Christian Andersen. But Grimms' Rapunzel was one of my favourites as a kid. I had a little read-it-yourself book - the line Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair' absolutely terrified me. I think you do bring those qualities forward from when you were a kid.

"As a child I'd always had hand puppets, and every Sunday I'd always do a little show from behind the couch "Ahhh," goes fellow actor Jess Sedler at this point. "I loved that feeling of being as many different people, other than myself, as possible. That sounds quite grim, doesn't it? I did school productions, and thought: This is the only thing I really enjoy doing'. So then it was drama school."

Each actor has to play at least six different characters, often switching rapidly from one to another. Quite a challenge, as Alex pointed out.

"I play Hansel for about two thirds of the first half of the show. So I'm quite young and sprightly. Then, in the 15 pages of script up to the interval, I've got to be two other characters, who are completely different.

"So you spend two days in rehearsal just working on Hansel, then all of a sudden you think: Right, I've got to do the King now.' You haven't got a clue what to do. So you have to make massive choices - if you're only playing one character, you can make lovely, subtle choices. But in this show you've just got to go for it, and sometimes make a fool of yourself. But it often works!"

"I play a character called the Star Girl at the beginning," said Jess. "Then I jump to the old witch in Hansel and Gretel. For a while I thought: How witchy shall we make her?' But I think the five-year-olds in the audience will be a bit disappointed if they don't see what they think of as a witch, so I'm working on a cackle. I think I might try and encourage a bit of booing as the witch. I get to die, too. As the witch I get tossed into the oven, and as Snow White I die three times. I expect to have lots of bruises on my body by the end of the run!"

One actor playing lots of characters normally means plenty of costume changes, often at high speed.

"We all have base costumes, which is very useful," Jess said. "Then we just put on a rag, or a hat, or a skirt - things on top. So the Mirror Tent will be littered with all kinds of props and bits of cloth, all carefully set into position. Hopefully, in two weeks' time we'll know the route of each one of those props, where it starts and where it ends up. It's complicated, and a bit scary at the moment."

"That question has made me think about it for the first time," said Alex. "It's a long way round the Mirror Tent, but if something is in the wrong place, you can grab something else and wing it. Because we are also acting as storytellers, it gives us licence. We can quite easily get up on stage and say: Where's that hat?'"

Tales from the Brothers Grimm runs from Wednesday until January 12 in the Mirror Tent at BMW Group Plant, Oxford. Box office: 01865 766266 or www.creationtheatre.co.uk