Three women on a stage covered in foliage, one dressed in green, one in blue, one in brown. This is the story of Sleeping Beauty, right? So one of them must be the princess who was woken with a kiss and lived happily ever after with her handsome prince.
Well yes and no – but mostly, no.
This is what really happened.
Thorns is a reimagining of the classic fairy tale, based on one of the earliest versions by Giambattista Basile (published 1634.) We soon learn that Talia (Elinor Chalmers) is the alleged Sleeping Beauty, but who are the other two? Why does the Queen (Kat Harrison) seem so bitter? Why are they both wearing crowns? And who on earth is Moon (Lia Moore)?
This stripped back production by Chaos Collective has the alternative story being told by just the three women, who barely move, at least until late in the play. They speak in fragments, referring to the events that have brought them to where they are now; it is for us to work out their history. This is an effective technique, especially when, at certain points, all three speak in unison; they could be a Greek chorus commenting on their own actions.
it seems that Talia’s story started off much as all of us have been told; she was the longed-for royal child, her parents held a feast to celebrate her birth, twelve Fae Queens were invited – but they forgot to invite the thirteenth, and she was not best pleased. She cursed the child, who would prick her finger on flax (not a needle; flax is in fact the culprit in Basile’s version of the story) and die, but when this does indeed happen, another fae manages to soften the curse so that Talia will sleep for a hundred years.
That fae is now sitting next to Talia; she is the girl in green, she is Sun. How did she end up here?
Kat Harrison, who is also the writer of Thorns, has partly followed Basile’s version of the story. In that, the ‘handsome prince’ of Disney fame is instead a king already. He comes across the sleeping Talia, wakes her up, and ‘gathers the first fruits of love.’
‘You’ll be my little secret.’
(Words that convey a very different type of relationship from that of two adult lovers. Talia is just sixteen years old.)
In other words, he rapes her. Basile didn’t dwell on that minor point, so Harrison has given it the oxygen it deserves. Talia ends up pregnant, and when she finally wakes up again she finds she’s the mother of twins. She calls them Sun and Moon – yes that same Moon, the fae, has transformed;
‘I drew myself into Talia when I felt her quickening womb.’
And Sun may be a just mortal boy, but he’s done what the King did not do; he’s removed the flax from Talia’s finger by sucking on it. He’s the one who’s woken her properly, not the rampant rapist.
The rest of the show relates what happens when the King comes back for more, and examines the relationship between the female characters. The person whose story grips us most is the wronged and vengeful Queen. Harrison does an excellent job in the role, conveying all of her misery and fury, and ultimately her madness, as she describes what she did when she found out what her man had been up to.
It’s tragic to see how she feels it’s her lack of ability to conceive an heir that has caused it all to happen; like most women, she blames herself, she blames her would-be replacement, and she blames Moon for failing to protect Talia. But, as the women chant together,
‘Self-preservation is not selfishness.’
The details the Queen lets drop about her marriage, however, show us who’s the real piece of work here; the King won’t even look the her in the face when they’re in bed;
‘He only lay with me from behind…..I ceased to exist.’
She’s even forgotten her own name.
The plot she devises to make her husband suffer is a wicked one, but she has been driven over the edge, claiming that she ‘wished them no harm’ while hatching a plan that will do rather more than just harm them. She is deranged. Without her husband she feels worthless, especially now that he’s fathered an heir elsewhere.
‘I provide the food on our table. What do you provide?’
What a nice man.
Harrison’s animated delivery makes us feel her every bit of her pain – and her frustration. The only time she has any power is when her husband is away;
‘For once our subjects looked to me for leadership and comfort. It was invigorating.’
Otherwise she is trapped in a loveless marriage, with no-one in whom to confide, and no outlet for her considerable intelligence.
Talia is an interesting character. At first she seems passive (and Sleeping Beauty has been criticised for this many times over the years – Sonia Saraiya ranked her as Disney’s least feminist princess*, Chelsea Mize said of the Disney version ‘Aurora literally sleeps for like three quarters of the movie…..Aurora just straight-up has no agency, and really isn’t doing much in the way of feminine progress’**), but as the story progresses, we begin to see another side of this woman.
Right at the outset, Talia drops a bit of a bombshell (though we don’t at that stage understand its full import);
‘I do actually forgive him.’
An admission instantly shredded by the furious Queen, so much so that we forget it – but it eventually makes some sort of sense.
And later;
‘I regret my selfishness.’
But does she? Talia also has a lot to lose in this ‘love’ triangle. Being nice won’t get her far. Chalmers plays Talia as an enigmatic, conflicted woman; this takes a while to show, and could maybe benefit from a little more emphasis, but by the end of the play I found her intriguing. Is she just a pragmatist in a man’s world? Is she a manipulative schemer? Or is she a desperate mother, doing anything she can to save her children, forced to act as she later does by the patriarchal society that surrounds her? Self-preservation is not selfishness.
‘He had won. He was always going to win.’
Lia Moore develops her fae/Moon character well. She’s detached, doing her job, even when she takes human form. She manages to inflict physical punishment on the wayward King (his reaction to that will seal his fate with animal lovers in the audience, though don’t worry, no animal is harmed in this production….) The King has destroyed her relationship with her mother – she looks too much like him. And she is not without human feelings; in the end she is sorry for the Queen, and protects her from the worst of her fate.
Moon describes her life in the ‘happy family’ once Talia has become Queen in ominous words;
‘I endured his fatherly attentions.’
We are left to imagine what those ‘attentions’ may have been.
And when the King himself is on his deathbed, Moon finally gets her revenge in the most satisfying of ways.
I saw Thorns on its first preview night, so it’s understandable that there were a few minor issues with the production. I am not entirely sure whether the beats were part of the play’s soundtrack or were in fact coming from another part of The Three Sisters, but unfortunately the sound production was not great, and I felt the play would have been better off without them. Noise from the adjacent bar also permeated the room from time to time, and I did wonder if the doors had been properly closed; the cast do not deserve this intrusion. Both Chalmers and Moore were very occasionally inaudible. I think this came more from speaking too quickly than too quietly; it would be good if they could slow down a little at some points.
Thorns is an interesting and powerful reinterpretation of a classic that most people today know only through its saccharine Disney version. Kat Harrison has not only dug deep into much older versions of this story, she has also considered its implications through the lens of modern feminism. Many other fairy stories could benefit from this treatment, and I look forward to seeing where she goes next.
Thorns is at The Laughing Horse at The Three Sisters (The Live Room), 139 Cowgate at 5.30pm every day until 27 August.
*In A Feminist Guide to Disney Princesses, Jezebel, December 2012
**In A Feminist Guide to All the Disney Princesses, Because Not Every Princess Was Down Waiting For Anyone to Rescue Her, Bustle, July 2015
Chaos Collective is a new production company based in Glasgow, focusing on theatre and film.
