hiatus | Tomiwa in Lionboy

[merlocmod.livejournal.com]

This evening (well, yesterday evening by now!) I went to see the play Lionboy with two of my favourite peeps, asifidletyou and her son. (Thank you for the lovely company, my darlings! ♥) The Lionboy himself, Charlie Ashanti, who can talk the language of cats, is - as I'm sure you all know by now - played by our own Adetomiwa Edun (Sir Elyan).

The play has been touring Bristol, Liverpool, Oxford, Warwick, Leeds, Cardiff - and is now in London, though only until this Sunday, 21 July. It is based on the books by Zizou Corder, the pen name for a mother-and-daughter team of writers.

We were well impressed by the creativity of the production. Settings included London, Paris and Morocco, with ships and circuses and laboratories created from a few props, costumes and a great deal of imagination. The seven actors, other than Tomiwa, played several roles, with many of the transformations happening on stage. Wonderful use was made of costume, movement and the casting of shadows.

The music and percussion was provided on stage by Stephen Hiscock, and was wonderfully effective. The mood he could evoke from playing a one-stringed whatever-it-was, percussively hitting the string to sound a variety of notes and tones, was awesome.

Tomiwa, of course, was also awesome. ♥ He was playing a twelve-year-old boy, and while he obviously has a man's body (I mean, he's not even boyishly skinny, but nicely muscular) his body language and his expressions were wonderful. His transformations from boy into lion and back to boy again as he acted out both sides of a conversation, were very impressive indeed. It was a great physical role, and utterly charming.

Another lovely aspect of the production was listening to recordings of Adrian Lester and Emma Thompson as the voices of Charlie's parents.

All of that, and you can colour in the large drawing to be found within the program! What more could you want...?



Well, we were lucky enough to have more! We did the stage door thing, and Tomiwa was as friendly and obliging as I knew he would be. He's such a lovely guy! He recognised me, and even remembered my name - which takes some doing, as I've hardly had the chance to interact with him for more than a few moments on two occasions. I know actors need to have good memories, but I would have thought all the lines he's learned since would have crowded such minor details out a long time ago. Bless him!

I asked him if he had any other work in the pipeline, and he said there were a couple of possibilities, but nothing for sure yet. He said one of the good things about being an actor was never quite knowing what was just around the corner. He seems to find this exciting rather than stressful!

He asked if we'd seen The Tempest, and of course we told him it was very good. :-)

He had a friend there waiting, so we said our farewells. He took the opportunity to teach our young companion a cool dude handshake. :-D

You couldn't get a play more diametrically opposed to but i cd only whisper, in which Tomiwa starred last year. He was and is great in both, and I suspect has a long and varied career ahead of him. I shall be watching with delight.