REVIEW: YAGA at Drayton Arms Theatre 1 – 19 November 2022

‘a noteworthy, significant attempt to make myths resonate in today’s world’ ★★★

From Toronto by way of E15 Acting School, Little Lion Theatre Company bring us a modern version of the folk tales that surround Baba Yaga, evil witch of Eastern Europe, or misunderstood proto-feminist. Baba Yaga lives in a hut in the forest, a hut that walks on legs like a chicken. She flies in a mortar rowing with a pestle, and she grinds to powder the bones of the unwary, to feed to her hens. Or not. Kat Sandler has shaped a private-eye thriller around the scaffolding of the myth, but now Yaga is a crone/mother/maiden trinity with a powerful sexuality and a taste for hunky young men. Robert de Domenici plays the private-eye and a hunky victim, Sarah Parker is a maiden and a detective, and Biz Lyon plays two aspects of the Yaga and some other parts. The doubling and trebling by the two women sets up an idea that all women are an aspect of the Yaga, all women get called witches at some point in their lives, all women need to embrace their witchy nature if they are ever to get out from under patriarchal thumbs, or enjoy uncomplicated sex.

The twists and turns of the thriller-meets-folk-tale plot make sense, the development is entertaining, the speeches about female assertion strike home. It’s a bit long and rambling, the set (Baba Yaga’s hut doing duty as police station and diner and lecturer’s office) is an appropriate setting, if a bit fussy and over-ornate, and the acting is good if a bit shouty. The running time, two and a quarter hours, is a bit over-indulgent, and a judicious edit would be welcome, but it’s a noteworthy, significant attempt to make myths resonate in today’s world.

Little Lion Theatre presents

YAGA

By Kat Sandle

Drayton Arms Theatre 1 – 19 November 2022

Keep in touch with the company on twitter @LLionTheatreCo

Reviewer:

Chris Lilly read Drama at Hull University in the 70s, stage-managed a bit, spent 8 years as a community arts worker in Tower Hamlets, did the occasional tech job, then taught in East London and participated in shedloads of community theatre. Since retiring from teaching, he has acquired an MA in Theatre from the University of Surrey and indulged a passion for live performance anywhere in London courtesy of his Freedom Pass.