Red
Daver Carey, Ashley Driver & Sebastian Ross
Rayne Theatre, Chickenshed
Star rating: 3.5
If you want a hip-hop folk story with all narrative expectations confounded then Chickenshed’s new show for Christmas 2025 ticks plenty of boxes. In this version of Red Riding Hood (yes, she does put one on eventually) Granny is a sort of mafiosa villainess and the wolf is a good guy, misunderstood of course. It also becomes a symbolic quest story because there are three amulets, in the possession of three different characters, which have to be found and united.
Like all Chickenshed shows it’s high octane fun with huge team-directed casts (five different juvenile rotas or casts – it was the 142-strong Blue Rota on press night) and its own, distinctive style of choreography. That means lots of lifts, leaps and leans and big actors picking up smaller ones to create architectural shapes. I’ve seen it there many times before but it still works effectively enough. What is different about this production is that most of the songs are rap style which means there isn’t a lot of choral repetition.
Blue Rota’s Maisie Packer as Red, (short for Mildred) has fine stage presence, oodles of stroppy insolence and, eventually enlightened wonder. There’s a good moment when she and Michael Bossise (who also co directs) as Wolf gaze at stars together and the lighting design (Andrew Caddies) works a bit of lump-in-the-throat magic.
The Chickenshed way of working is for talented adults in the cast to provide a framework so the inclusive theatre experience becomes richly immersive for all performers. Most of these adults are graduates of Chickenshed’s education programmes who now work for the company. Cara McInanny (who also co-directs with Bethany Hamlin and Jonny Morton) for example, is glitteringly commanding as Granny and her song “It’s Fun to Be Bad” is a almost a show stopper.
Then there’s the signing – another Chickenshed trademark. Every word spoken is simultaneously and integrally signed somewhere on stage. And when it’s a dialogue then that is replicated by a two signers. There are many signers in the company and in one of two of the ensemble numbers everyone does it at a simple level. Shiloh Maersk, whom I’ve seen in action in many Chickenshed shows, is exceptionally charismatic to watch because his movement work is so fluid that the signing and the dancing are all one. He has completed Chickenshed’s BA course and is now a mentor, performer and teacher there.
Inclusivity is Chickenshed’s raison d’être and in Red, as always, I admire the way that performers in need of support on stage get it with respectful subtlety. And as usual much of the dialogue, sung or spoken, is split amongst dozens of young performers who can be anywhere on the large stage. I can see why this is done but it often makes it difficult to work out who is singing or speaking before the moment is over and we’re on to something else – it’s a pretty busy show.
Usually at Chickenshed, the live band is hidden away so that we don’t see them. For this show part of it visibly on a platform above the back screen. It’s a massive youth band, directed by Phil Haines, and they make a terrific sound so that’s another feather in Chickenshed’s cap.
The story telling is bit weak in the first half but becomes clearer after the interval and some of the minor characters are superfluous although they’re well directed. In general, though, Red is the usual feel-good achievement we’ve come to expect from Chickenshed.
