Here is a charmingly hybrid festive show, part modern retelling of One Thousand and One Nights, part alternative pantomime.
There is a narcissistic tyrant-king (Nicholas Karimi) who is depleting the kingdom of its natural resources for his own selfish ends. After his queen absconds, he takes revenge on womankind by sending out marital orders to female villagers and then consigns those brides to his dungeon.
There is also a plucky activist, Schere (Yasemin Özdemir, a modern-day Scheherazade in dungarees), who plots to save the women of the land and transform the king with her marvellous powers of storytelling. She inveigles her way into the palace and his affections by mesmerising him with her fantastical cliffhangers, though all does not go quite as planned, and he remains stubbornly self-serving.
Written by Sonali Bhattacharyya, there is a rough and ready delight to this show. The songs sound hashed together, the singing voices wobbly, and the king, with his growing bevy of wives, seems like a character nabbed from Carry on Up the Khyber.
Yet there is a warm and winning energy to this production, directed by Blanche McIntyre. Puppets are manipulated by actors, from a magical, winged horse (by Saikat Ahamed, who also plays Schere’s father and performs a fine whinny) to a serpent with a luminous spine.
It all has a deliberately deconstructed and scrappy feel, with actors wheeling on a kitchen unit and door frame for scenes inside Schere’s home, although the set, designed by Hannah Sibai, also opens up in surprising ways. There is a fabulous performance from Karimi as the spoilt man-boy of a monarch and an equally delightful turn by Patrick Osborne as his servant cum adviser, who is full of physical comedy.
The scenes of Schere, her sister and fisherman father at home seem like the Arabian version of EastEnders, with their kettle and cuppas (though it is lemon tea) and some dialogue sounds slapdash, with a vague message around climate damage tacked on. But Bhattacharyya’s script comes fully alive and fizzes with quick comedy when we go to the palace. The king – a panto villain if ever there was one – has all the best lines. An idiosyncratic show with charisma, however rough around the edges it may be.
• At Bristol Old Vic until 6 January
