The wolves do not so much prowl as cascade. Having scampered to the treetops, they tumble down upon the helpless villagers in this creepy staging of Angela Carter’s full-blooded variation on Little Red Riding Hood. They seem to be everywhere: not only high and low on Laura Willstead’s frostily bare set, but also behind us, stationed at microphones to create unnerving sound effects or to add jarring narration to the action on stage.
In part, that is a reminder of the script’s origins as a radio play, written by Carter in 1980 after the 1979 publication of The Bloody Chamber, her collection of reworked fairytales. Co-director Theresa Heskins says she has done more of an edit than an adaptation and retains Carter’s rich gothic language and obsessive storytelling.
It is as if the stories themselves prowl beast-like around Danielle Bird’s Red, sometimes teaching, sometimes threatening. There is one tale too many (the climax of the show is no time for digressions), but otherwise these stories within stories lure the little girl towards a fearsome place of myth and fable.
Curious, straight-talking and determined, Red is up for adventure. Her trek to visit Granny (Lorna Laidlaw) is a journey of sexual awakening. The only colour on a stage punishingly lit by Daniella Beattie, turning everything pallid, is the ball of wool that will become Red’s cape. Like the lipstick she applies, the blood-red wool is a symbol of her approaching womanhood. The wolf – “carnivore incarnate” – stands for brute masculinity, both scary and alluring. For Red to stray off the path is an ever-present temptation.
This being a collaboration with co-director Vicki Dela Amedume of circus company Upswing, the wolves lurk overhead. Barring one redundant sequence after the interval, the aerial skills are not only impressive in themselves but expertly integrated, not least in the final encounter between Red and the Wolf/Gentleman (Sebastian Charles), their weightlessly erotic dance proving theirs to be a union of sexual equals. “I am nobody’s meat,” cries Red, defiantly.
With James Atherton’s electronic score adding a layer of percussive danger, it makes for a dark and dynamic production, ravishing in both senses.
• At the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme until 12 October
