Nov. 30, 2011 - Issue #841: Merry movie night
Wyrd Sisters
» Douglas Dollars
Director J Nelson Niwa admits he's somewhat of a recent Pratchett convert, having been reading his works for a mere eight years. "When I came into it, he was already 20 books deep," he grins. Still, having read (and reread) most of them by now, Niwa's as well versed as any who might look to bring Pratchett's Discworld to the stage, which he's set to do in directing the Walterdale's production of Wyrd Sisters. Boasting a cast of 21, and a layer of Shakespeare mixed into the plot, it charts the happenings of a scheming prince, a trio of witches, a king's ghost and a theatre troupe touring the land.
It's been a process to bring that world onto the stage—aside from working with those both familiar with Pratchett and those for whom it's brand new, Niwa notes the scheduling difficulty that is trying to get 21 people in a room together, praising his assistant director for taking the reins on that—but Niwa also notes how the clever, grounding sense of satire in Pratchett's story has made made it far from unweildly.
"Prachett has taken a classic genre, the Tolkien-esque world: you've got witches who do magic, there's wizards trekking 'round that do a different kind of magic, there's trolls running around, there's dwarves—not all necessarily in this play—but [he's] really given it, strangely enough, a serious dose of common sense," he says. "It's interesting having a satirist who says, 'Okay, well we've got a fantasy genre, we've got a fantasy story, but if we had one or two characters that actually bloody well thought logically, what would happen?' And it always turns out to be interesting."
Until Sat, Dec 10 (8 pm)
Directed by J Nelson Niwa
Walterdale Playhouse, $10.50 – $16 vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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