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Crooked Dances review – an unfinished fairytale

The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon
Robin French’s new play mixes music, folklore and contemporary ideas to intriguing, if overlong effect

Into a house in a forest go a boy and a girl. Wolves howl. Inside, the boy and girl are fed gingerbread by a wise woman. Strange things happen in the night. Robin French’s new play seems part fairytale, part play of ideas.

In appearance, at first, it looks like a contemporary drama. Katy (Jeany Spark, below) is a struggling journalist. Nick (Olly Mott) is an upcoming photographer. Their paper has sent them to Paris where the acclaimed, publicity-shy Chilean pianist Silvia de Zingaro (Ruth Lass), on the eve of her retirement, will give them her first interview for a decade. If Katy can get Silvia to tell the secrets of her private life, it will be the scoop she dreams of.

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