Based on Cornelia Funke’s best-selling young adults novel and adapted for the stage by Stephen Sharkey and Walter Meierjohann, Inkheart is the first in-house Christmas production at Manchester’s impressive HOME theatre.
Inkheart introduces us to twelve-year old, book-worm Meggie, (Katherine Carlton) feisty, strong, and soon to discover her Father Mo (Paul McEwan) has in incredible talent that will change their lives forever, Mo you see is a ‘Silver Tongue’ which means when he reads a book the characters come to life and literally escape from the pages. As wonderful as this sounds it’s not all plain sailing as along with the good, loveable characters also come the sinister and evil individuals, the worst of them being Capricorn (Will Irvine) who wants to destroy both Meggie, Mo and even his own creator Author Fenoglio (Kern Falconer).
Stephane Laime has gifted the cast with awesome staging to work with, the giant mountain of books which takes centre stage is hugely impressive, rotating and opening to create different scene settings, combined with Mike Gunning’s Lighting design and Jim Dawson’s Video design the whole effect is mesmerising.
The cast bring great drama and a huge amount of energy to the production, each character is strongly defined, Director Walter Meierjohann encourages his cast to use all areas of HOME’s impressive theatre, characters appear at different levels and walk amongst the seats, something that totally enthralled the younger members of the audience and kept them glued to the action.
Whilst Inkheart isn’t classically a Christmas show it is an absolute treat of a family production, clever, engaging and most importantly spreading the message that strength, love and courage will conquer evil and darkness and that we are all indeed, the writers of our own stories.
Inkheart on until Saturday 9th January
www.homemcr.org
