Apart from an unresolved puzzle over who or what Orpheus is, Pilot Theatre’s decision to focus A Song for Ella Grey on a group of close-knit friends does justice to David Almond’s book that his own solo play script never could.
It’s time for Ella Grey at Northern Stage. Or, for those of us with long enough memories, Ella Grey round two. For those of us with long enough memories, this is in fact the second time Northern Stage has produced an adaptation of David Almond’s young adult novel for the stage. Seven years ago they did a solo play, written by David Almond himself and directed by then artistic director Lorne Campbell. That came hot off the heels of the publication and acclaim of the original book (not to mention a successful adaptation of another David Almond story over at Live Theatre), but wasn’t one of the most memorable ones. In retrospect, I think this vision was what I call “over-conceptualised” – an abstract staging of what’s already an abstract story, which ended up confusing everybody.
But … Pilot Theatre aren’t giving up that easily, and now they’re having a go. And if anyone’s going to do this right, it’s Pilot Theatre, who’s discovered they’re very good at doing adaptations of young adult novels. This time, it’s Zoe Cooper doing the adaptation – her biggest success to date is probably Jess and Joe Forever. The most obvious change from the original play? It’s gone from a solo play to an ensemble of five. This, I think, goes a long way to addressing two weaknesses of the original play.
Firstly, there’s the focus of the play. This story might be a retelling of Orpheus and Euripides, but Ella Grey isn’t all dropping dead from snake bites and adventurers in the underworld and failing the mission on a borderline violation of one very specific stipulation. It’s just as much a group of five close-knit friends spending a last summer together before they go their separate ways. Needless to say, one person cannot easily depict that, and this decision opens up a whole new dimension to the story which, in hindsight, would have been impossible for a solo play to achieve.
Now the difficult bit: who or what is this Orpheus? In this retelling, Euripedes is now Ella, an ordinary sixth-former doing A-levels, but Orpheus is still an otherworldly mythological figure. This, I felt, was the weakest link of the solo play. Here, there was a decision made which I wasn’t expecting, but, in retrospect, was a good call: Orpheus never appears on stage. He (She? They?) only ever appears as a shadow on the curtains, recognisable only by a crown of sticks. This gives a very clear divide between world we know the supernatural world where Orpeheus comes from.
Northern Stage’s interest, of course, comes from the local setting. It begins on a summer’s day in Ouseburn, runs via the party of your life on Bamburgh beach, and the portal to the underworld is now the sluice gate back in Ouseburn. (I am actually enough of an infrastructure nerd to know the real use of that gate, and to be honest, I think I’d prefer the journey into the underworld.) It at Bamburgh Beach where the story first strays from the real to the unreal. Claire is phoning Ella, kept at home by protective parents, do discuss things important to teenagers such as upcoming exams and first kiss, when “Orpheus” appears on the sea, and borrow Claire’s phone for a song that charms her. One small but notable detail is attempting to rationalise the death of Ella a bit more. In mythological Greece, people walk round dropping dead from snake bites all the time and no-one bats an eyelid; here, more is done to steer this away from the confusing setup of deadly poisonous snakes living on the Northumberland coast but nobody noticed.
Unfortunately, the one thing that still doesn’t make sense is who or what Orpheus is. In mythological Greece, a mysterious otherworldly figure who can win anybody’s heart with a song might be normal – but that’s harder to believe in modern Newcastle and Northumberland. One would have thought that out of all of Ella’s friends, the teacher who watches Ella climb out a school window, and various parents (Ella’s ultra-protective ones included) inviting Orpheus over – all fully aware of how Orpheus turned up with a fantasy costume and marriage proposal to an 18-year-old and no agreement on whether Orpheus is a he, she or they – at least one person would have said “What the hell is going on here?”
There might be an explanation for this in the book. I don’t know, I haven’t read it. It might be that Orpheus’s song doesn’t just charm Ella – it also charms those around Ella who care for her into trust, perhaps misplaced trust. But if that’s the case, it feels like a missed opportunity. Perhaps after a devastated Orpheus withdraws and the charm magic fades, Claire and her friends realise none of them them were thinking straight. There is an ending written in though that’s not part of the original myth: whether you like it not, the world does not stop forever. Even the death of a closest friend does not stop lives moving ahead for those left behind.
One small aside worth mentioning is the star name of Grace Long. She’s probably the best known name out of the ensemble of five due to her character comedy skits. However, after the initial casting press release this barely got a mention. That, I think, was the right decision. It’s easy to dismiss celebrity castings – out of the things I’ve seen, however, the celebrity names tend to do as good a job as the non-celebrity names. Grace Long is no exception, and my confidence of someone who does character comedy so brilliantly was not misplaced. But I don’t think you would have done any favours by mentioning one person’s TikTok fame in a production that so heavily relies on being a team. Pilot Theatre does have the advantage of not needing celebrity names to get an audience, if the audience numbers in York on a Tuesday were anything to go by. (That said, if Grace Long wants to do her own adaptation of Ella Grey told entirely in her trademark passive-aggressive monlogues, I’ll be up for it.)
And, of course, there is the staging. I have run on of ways to sing praises for Pilot Theatre’s staging. It’s something they were known for long before their currently string of young adult adaptations started, and they’ve always found a new way to be visually striking. Artistic director Esther Richardson did this one, but whether or she’s in charge of a play, her style has always made its mark across their repertoire. Really, the only thing I have to fault with is the one thing PIlot didn’t easily have control over, being the confusing plot thread over who or what Orpeheus is. Other than that, a good job done, and yet another in the catalogue with no real weak link.
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