Bronagh Lagan on why James and the Giant Peach continues to be a hit

Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach will be staged at Ductac on May 12 and 13. Courtesy Sell A Door Theatre Company

A four metre wide and 2.5 metre tall giant plastic peach will be the centrepiece of a children’s production that will be staged in Dubai from Thursday.

Roald Dahl's tale of resilience James and the Giant Peach will be staged at Ductac — Mall of the Emirates — on May 12 and 13.

Dahl’s dark yet playful story about a neglected boy James and his escape from his grim existence with his dreadful aunts on a giant peach to America with a group of insect friends will be told with music, puppeteering, cut-outs and exaggerated props. The giant soft and squashy inflatable peach will be the highlight of the show. James mode of transport in the production is curved and hollow making the scene inside the peach intimate. Kate Unwin, the freelance set and costume designer of the production says they have tried to create a storybook on stage. “We are creating a fairy tale world with the sets and props,” she says.

“From the beginning we have had the idea of using 2-D aesthetics and looking at shadow puppets and cut-outs. A lot of the props and set elects are simple but help the actors tell the story and move the action.”

Bronagh Lagan, the director of the production, tells us why Dahl’s stories continue to be a hit with today’s generation.

Q: How is your adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story different from the other stage shows?

A: We have a small cast playing many roles and the piece itself is multidisciplinary with the actors; playing instruments, puppeteering, singing, dancing and operating lights. The concept for the piece was to create a travelling band of players which is quite literally what the cast are on tour. The story is told retrospectively with the audience meeting James at the start of the show after the adventure has happen. He retells it with the help of his giant insect friends.

Q: Why do his stories appeal to a younger generation even today?

A: Roald Dahl wasn’t afraid to tell dark and macabre stories. Often his child protagonists are neglected, abandoned or orphaned such as James. They fight through adversity to triumph and usually they escape their grim existence through incredible flights of fancy. In James and The Giant Peach an orphaned boy flies to America on top of Giant Peach, with the help of his insect friends, to escape his two horrible aunts. Roald Dahl didn’t write for his child audience and I think that is a huge appeal.

Q: What was your favourite scene to direct?

A: The scene that was both the most fun and most difficult to create was the underwater sequence. There is no dialogue just stage directions which says something along the lines of; Centipede falls into the ocean, he has a fight with an octopus, James recuses him. We created the scene using the peach as the body of the octopus and tentacles are then puppeteered by the cast. After we have staged the scene our composer Harry then created original underscoring based around what we had done.

Q: What will be the most exciting aspect of this production for the young audience?

A: The piece has a lot of strong visual elements including puppetry and object manipulations. There are even moments were we need the audience’s help and participation to ensure the Peach lands safely.

When visualising the piece at the very beginning I wanted to create something that would enable the children to see the mechanics of how it all works so they could recreate the ideas themselves at home. (Obviously not to the same scale.) The shadow puppets have proved to be a real hit with our younger audience and the journey of the Peach is something that adults and kids alike have been extremely excited by, but I shouldn’t give much more away.

James and the Giant Peach will be staged at Ductac- Mall of the Emirates on May 12 at 5pm and May 13 at 11am, 3pm and 6pm. Tickets are from Dh140 on www.ductac.org.​