Last night we had the absolute pleasure of going to the opening night of Awful Auntie at the Liverpool Empire Theatre. If you get the chance to go and watch it, either at Liverpool or whilst it tours the UK, then I highly recommend that you do, especially if you’re a fan of the book.
What is Awful Auntie?
Awful Auntie on stage is a theatrical adaptation of David Walliams’ best selling book. It tells the tale of a young girl, Lady Stella Saxby, who tragically looses both her parents in a car accident and is left in the care of her Auntie Alberta who only wants one thing, to become the heir of Saxby Hall.
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Stella is held hostage by her Awful Aunt and in a bid to escape she must enlist the help of a ghost, take on a giant mountain owl and get very creative. However, as those of you who are familiar with David Walliams’ books will know, things are never that straight forward and there are a few plot twists and much hilarity along the way.
Our review of Awful Auntie
When we arrived the stage was already set for the opening scene and it soon became apparent that the staging and props would very cleverly rotate to create different rooms in the house. Sometimes these movements were so seamless you didn’t even realise they were happening as your attention was directed elsewhere.
The show starts a little bit further ahead than where the book does with Stella waking from a coma with no memory of the accident or knowledge of her parents death but it doesn’t miss anything by doing so and the dialogue has been written in such a way that it quickly fills you in on anything you may need to know, which I think worked really well.
The cast is made up of only 5 members, Awful Auntie Alberta who is played by Neal Foster, who also directed the show and plays his part brilliantly, delivering some cracking one liners. Annie Cordoni who plays twelve year old Stella Saxby and shows her transition from innocent upper class child to independent orphan amazingly. They were joined on stage by Matthew Allen playing the ghost of Soot who had everyone laughing with his cockney rhyming slang, Zain Abrahams who is hilarious playing the slightly delirious butler, Gibbon and Emily Essery who is the puppet master for the very impressive owl, Wagner.
All five actors were fantastic and managed to recreate the book brilliantly, bringing to life the story of death, greed, and survival with humour and then ending it with a real heart warming message about equality, stereotypes and caring for others.
Overall we thoughly enjoyed the show. It was laugh out loud funny, a true representation of a great book and the perfect family show.
If you’d like to go and see if for yourself then Awful Auntie still has the following tour dates coming up
- 13th Jun to 16 Jun Liverpool Empire
- 20 Jun to 23 Jun Theatre Royal Nottingham
- 27 Jun 24 to 30 Jun Hall for Cornwall, Truro
- 04 Jul to 06 Jul New Victoria Theatre, Woking
- 11 Jul to 14 Jul Darlington Hippodrome
- 18 Jul to 21 Jul Hull New Theatre
- 25 Jul to 27 Jul Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham
- 12 Sep to 15 Sep Gaiety Theatre, Dublin
- 19 Sep to 22 Sep Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury
- 26 Sep to 29 Sep Grand Opera House York
- 3 Oct to 5 Oct Stoke Regent Theatre
- 10 Oct to 12 Oct Theatre Royal, Brighton
- 17 Oct to 19 Oct The Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham
- 24 Oct to 27 Oct Floral Pavilion, New Brighton, Wirral
- 31 Oct to 02 Nov Milton Keynes Theatre
- 07 Nov to 10 Nov New Wimbledon Theatre
