“Contains full male and female nudity and scenes of an explicit sexual nature.” Blimey, they aren’t joking.
Most of the show is performed in the nip with additional twerking, genital scrubbing and an all-heaving finale. But behind the bawdiness, Phelim McDermott’s production has charm.
The play is only ostensibly about the familiar fairy tale as the focus soon shifts to the romance between the lead actors and real-life couple, Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz, who also co-wrote the piece. She’s a former Coney Island beauty queen; he was born with phocomelia resulting in “perfectly deformed” arms.
Framed against anecdotes from their relationship, the classic love story gains a fresh angle and also delivers a poignant statement about how we view disability.
Sadly, not everything holds together. Gothic shadow puppets, burlesque and Carry On-style visual innuendos with fruit are thrown in haphazardly, not always with success.
The performances of Fraser and Muz keep the production afloat while their confidence and comfort with each other — and in their own bodies — is impressive. Not one for the prudish, though.
Until December 21 (020 7922 2922, youngvic.org)
