Return to the Forest does everything it says on the tin: it transforms Sadler’s Wells East into a magical, immersive place, friendly to children and families and delivers an hour and a half of pure joy.
A museum heist is a great story, especially when the objects on display are intriguing and charmed – and you’ve had the chance to get to know them on stage before the show starts. The action happens on the stage with the audience sitting round. It then moves through the curtains to a backstage area, into a forest, as enchanted as Caliban’s isle, full of sounds and spirits, before finally returning to home base.
Presented by Theatre-Rites with choreographer, Gregory Maqoma, it has an amazing international team of dancers and creatives. The five performers are multi-talented, each with their own unique skill set. They start in a gang, pulling on hoods and dark glasses as they stake out the museum and the five objects sitting on plinths. There are interesting street dance moves as they shimmy under and leap over radar beams. The CCTV is disarmed with lively electric shocks, and the five load their treasures into bags and scarper.
We are signalled to follow them into the next space; another central dance area ringed by informal seating. The exhausted thieves open their bags, and first out is the ishoba, the Zulu divinity stick with a swishing tail. It finds a life of its own as it sticks to the floor and resisting all the tugging and pulling to lift it. Mayowa Ogunnaike proves the strong woman, able to break the spell. With the ishoba in hand, it continues to whisk relentlessly, initiating lively reactions in dance plus plenty of comedy as it is passed round the dancers.
In the forest there is a treasury of objects in a world of discovery where nothing is quite what it seems. There are toys to play with but also objects of deep significance treated with utmost respect; gentle hints that question why these objects were taken to the museum in the first place. The silver rectangular tube of the CCTV is given an animal persona with the addition of curled horns and festooned with a spaghetti-like curtain of multi-coloured curls. The creature expands growing four legs while another, more philosophical, puppet rides atop with Teele Uustani and Simon Palmer adding hands in very skilful coordination.
The magnificent creature leaves the stage and finds a path through the audience to the delight of the children. Natnael Dawit and South African, Xolisile Bongwana, make up the complement of dancers. The five make an impressive team of different temperaments, interpreting Maqoma’s choreography with individual style but all to a common purpose. Bongwana in particular showed a mesmerising weighty grace that made him eminently watchable. Later when an array of different sized wooden bowls, were added to the props, he showed his percussion skills drumming the upturned curved surfaces to accompany his powerful voice.
Light streams down from the high tower on this strange immersive world, so full of the unknown yet so inviting. The coils of coloured curls have become a huge wall hanging and sacks of hessian float down to cocoon the dancers before they find another use for the material in shaping a mysterious crater where each finds a novel way of disappearing into its depth. The magic continued as the dancers reappeared now clad in multicoloured Lycra. They draw red streamers across the space and invite the children on to the stage to play. More puppets and fantastic creatures join in as we move again to the front stage that has become a friendly shared space to dance, clap and just enjoy.
Director Sue Buckmaster has done an extraordinary job in melding so many talents to one purpose. Miguel Altunaga served as assistant choreographer while Frank Moon and Domenica Angarano composed the music and sound design. Costume design, set design and puppets saw the creativity spill over from one field to another as Jean Chan, Kinnetia Isidore, Alison Duddle and Naomi Oppenheim all had a hand in creating figures of wild imagination and Guy Hoare illuminated it all. I wish it were possible for every child to enjoy such a show.
