|
‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book?’ tells the story of Herb, a mischievous five year old who enjoys ‘ scribbling and snippering’ in his books.
One night Herb falls asleep with his head in a book of his favourite fairytales and wakes to find himself the star of the stories.
 Chased by a bolshy Goldilocks, befriended by Cinderella and berated by her evil Stepmother, Herb strives to find a way out.
 He quickly learns the consequences of having doodled on the pages and drawn moustaches on princesses, before being saved by the Fairy Godmother.
Featuring original songs with lyrics by Jonathan Lloyd and music by Michael Friedman; Who Am I?, Twirly Bits, Let Me See, and So You See.
|
I created the role of the Herb, the young mischievous boy who, ready for bed in his stripy blue pj’s, falls asleep and wakes to find himself inside his book of fairytales.
This was the first time I had played a five year old!
I had just about resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be working for Christmas when the chance to audition for Jonathan Lloyd (the Associate Director at the Soho Theatre) came up. He had adapted Lauren Child’s Smarties Prize Winning Book, and was looking for a ‘Herb’.
 Lauren Child is the award winning (Kate Greenaway Medal Winner) author and illustrator of ‘Beware of the Storybook Wolves’, ‘I Will Not Never Not Ever Eat A Tomato’, and the hugely popular ‘Clarice Bean’ series and more recently ‘Hubert Horatio Bartie Bobton-Trent’.
The illustrations in ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book’ are both alluring and frenetic, with clever collages made up of ink drawings, colourful fabric samples, wood grain and photographs cut and slotted together.
Several typefaces are used and the size, shape and orientation of the text vary to complement the twists and turns of the story. To mirror this imaginative story telling the play became a clever blend of live action, moving projection, animation and song.
I played Herb throughout the 50-minute production, whilst two other actors played at least six other characters each!
 We were accompanied by animated characters (the Ugly Sisters and two of the Three Bears!) and moving settings and locations.
All the fairytale locations and extra characters were projected and animated onto a large book-shaped screen at the back of the studio space.
‘Big Bad Book’ was the Soho Theatre’s first in-house Christmas show, bringing charm and fairytale tradition to the West End for younger  children. It was an immensely enjoyable and rewarding experience to be involved in this engaging, unpatronising, production of such quality.
|
 ...........................................
“Fast, funny adaption”
The Sunday Times Culture Magazine
...........................................
“The animations are a total triumph … Herb, a winsome, striped pajamaed Simon Greiff”
Whatsonstage -
*** Three Stars
...........................................
“Jonathan Lloyd’s fast-moving stage adaptation … an engagingly awkward Simon Greiff”
The Sunday Times
...........................................
“(the book is) fleshed out in this lively stage rendering … technically impressive and heaps of fun, this is an adaptation that manages to go by the ‘book’ and turn over some new leaves”
Time Out
...........................................
“Charming adaptation … the staging inventively translates the book into visual terms … Simon Greiff plays the boy with an amiable Jim Carrey fluidity”
The Stage
...........................................
“Simon Greiff gets things off to a good start as Herb … his mischievousness and curiosity are calculated to appeal to any child; he can also seem engagingly helpless”
The Sunday Telegraph
...........................................
|
