Saturday March 30, 2024
THE BOOK OF EVERYTHING
Review

THE BOOK OF EVERYTHING

January 4 2010

The Book of Everything, Belvoir St Theatre, January 2-31, 2010; Theatre of Image & Company B Belvoir. Photo: Heidrun Lohr.

CREATIVE excellence and aeons of experience in this kind of kids-of-all-ages magic are what make The Book of Everything the most delightful and rewarding start to 2010. The excellence and experience are delivered by Richard Tulloch, translator-playwright; Kim Carpenter, designer-visionary, and Neil Armfield, director. Each has contributed something characteristically special to the production and their collective efforts are simply wonderful.

Theatre of Image’s Kim Carpenter fortuitously read the prize-winning short novel, by Dutch author Guus Kuijer and contacted Tulloch, who is one of the most under-rated writers for the stage and young people in this country; moreover his wife is Dutch and these days they spend half the year in Amsterdam. Consequently, Tulloch not only was able to translate and adapt the novel for the stage without outside interference, but he also knows the city and the Dutch way of life and idioms – as quickly becomes obvious. Add to these two Neil Armfield, who gave us The Small Poppies and is adept at finding his own and everyone else’s inner child, and it would have had to be a cold and frosty Friday in Rangoon for this to be anything less than “much anticipated”.

As it is, The Book of Everything anticipation is not disappointed and the resulting show is a heartfelt, heartwarming, tough, funny, witty and honest-to-god triumph. A large part of its success is down to the casting. Armfield has rounded up some of the very best with a canny eye and ear for character; and Alison Bell, Peter Carroll, Julie Forsyth, Iain Grandage, Claire Jones, Deborah Kennedy, John Leary, Yael Stone and Matthew Whittet are flawless.

The story: it is 1951 and Thomas Klopper (Matthew Whittet) is – almost – ten; he is a nervous, imaginative boy who lives in suburban Amsterdam with his mother (Claire Jones) and uppity teenage sister Margot (Alison Bell) and father (Peter Carroll). Mr Klopper is a dehydrated Calvinist of painfully authentic ignorance and self-righteous nastiness. Thomas is trying desperately to make sense of his life and to achieve his modest ambition – to be happy, so he is keeping a diary of all the daily events of his family and neighbourhood: “the book of everything”.

Into the book go his hopes, fears, ideas and dreams as well as encounters with a ferocious local dog, the Bumbiter. His Aunt Pie (Deborah Kennedy), a proto-feminist housewife who rides a bicycle and has taken to wearing slacks is a frequent visitor to the unhappy Klopper home, while out in the street, Thomas meets his sister’s friend (Yael Stone) who is known as the Girl with the Leather Leg and is a “cripple” of almost 16. Then there’s next-door neighbour, the scary Mrs van Amersfoort (Julie Forsyth) who the local kids believe is a witch because she looks weird, is old and has a cat. As it happens Mrs van Amersfoort is actually a war widow and her husband a member of the Dutch Resistance who was betrayed by Nazi sympathisers (possibly Mr Klopper who believes they were Communists). Mr van Amersfoort was shot in the street outside and the neighbours and his wife were forced to watch. Although a babe in arms Thomas was at the execution, his mother gently tells him. He is wide-eyed with the easily imagined horror of this event, especially as he has made friends with Mrs van Amersfoort and is invited into her lair for cordial and Beethoven on the gramophone.

Setting the story in a still raw, post-war Amsterdam gives The Book of Everything layers of meaning that should fascinate adult members of the audience while possibly going over the heads of the kids. It makes Thomas’s imaginary life all the more poignant as he struggles to comes to grips with a bewildering cruel world; his slowly dawning realisation of the reality of his father’s behaviour and his mother’s inability to fight back. And while the plagues of Egypt – thunderously related by Mr Klopper in the daily Bible reading over their meagre meals – may or may not be actual, the same applies to the tropical fish he sees in a nearby canal and a hurricane that happens in the next street. Yet, in the world of a child, particularly one who has suffered the fear and emotional deprivation of war and its almost-as-bad aftermath, the imagination and the everyday obviously intertwine and interchange when it comes to coping and escape.

THE BOOK OF EVERYTHING

This becomes startlingly apparent when the teenage Margot, a snide miss if ever there were one, comes to the end of her tether with her father – without even realising there was a tether to run out. Her response to his bullying is disturbingly violent and seemingly incongruous – until you stop to think about what she witnessed as a child during the privations and terror of occupied Amsterdam. These elements provide an engrossing and richly textured ground for the lighter whimsy and flights of childlike fancy that float above it.

Nigel Levings has devised a lighting plot that is as deceptively effective as Kim Carpenter’s set and costume design is inspired simplicity: a giant facsimile of Thomas’s diary stands ready to open, page by page, at the rear of the stage. In it are Thomas’s drawings of his home, the street, the guppies, the canal and Mrs van Amersfoort’s overstuffed house. Otherwise the playing space is empty except for occasional wooden chairs and a kitchen table. Members of the cast operate the various sound effects and they enliven the various aspects of Thomas’s world with apparently magical ease and purpose. The effects (sound design Steve Francis) and original music, played live by Ian Grandage, add further dimensions of wit and aptness and are beautifully integrated into the whole.

The wit and humour injected into the script, action and characters are a joy to behold and when Our Lord (John Leary) arrives to chat to Thomas, it’s at once properly natural and nonsensical. The Book of Everything is indeed everything that Mr Klopper’s book (his interpretation of the Bible) is not. It is loving, warm, wise and joyous. It also contains input from everyone around Thomas so that the scared, lonely boy finds the capacity to be courageous and to make friends – and find love and see beauty.

Hard to imagine that The Book of Everything won’t be a smash hit and as it’s playing only until the end of January, that it won’t be picked up to tour and finally come back to Belvoir. It is a gem. I loved it; will try to find time to go back again and can only recommend it without reservation.

 

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