Ugglie Wump by Newbury Youth Theatre at the Quaker meeting House is an absolute delight and a consummate ensemble piece. If the enthusiasm, commitment, and talent of this group could be bottled and sold then many another fringe show would be in the market.
With adroit physical theatre and a witty script twenty-five young actors create a monster quest story for children; the monsters, including a giant duck, are sought and dispensed with in the search for the mysterious Ugglie Wump, (with an acknowledged debt to ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ and similar.)
There are crazy songs and innovative staging which propel the piece to somewhere between Python and Edward Gorey, I gather one new (and very funny) song was added on the day I saw the show, a credit to the bravery of these young performers. The play delves deep into the irrationality of childhood fears, always with great humour (and parents oddly absent), and eventually concludes that monsters in the shadows may not really exist – being merely ‘A little bit of everything you never knew you feared’ – a hint of the emerging adult in the child perhaps, and all the ‘monsters’, real or imagined, that are to come. – By the way those missing parents have fallen down a well of course, …and may even be the Ugglie Wump.
Silly grown ups…Utterly captivating.
Ade Morris
Five Stars
Submitted by Ade Morris
