Shapwick Prep Visit Bristol Old Vic
Michael Morpurgo is the author of ‘An Elephant in the Garden’. The story is about a girl called Lizzie, who is about 16 years old, whose mother is the keeper of an elephant at Dresden zoo. The elephant is called Marlene, after Marlene Dietrich who was a German singer. Because of the danger of the zoo being bombed by the British and Americans, all the animals would have to be shot to prevent them running wild. The mother persuaded her zoo keeper boss to keep the elephant in her garden. Michael Morpurgo was inspired by the true story of a zoo keeper in Belfast who took her elephant home with her to prevent it being shot if the Germans attacked.
We saw a one woman production of the story ‘An Elephant in the Garden’ at Bristol. The show in my opinion was very good. To understand it you had to be a good listener and have a good imagination to put the puzzle together and to figure out the story. It was sad when the dad had to go to the war to fight the Americans and English and he never came back, they don’t know how he died necessarily. My favourite bit was how everyone in the story was so kind to the family and that was heart warming. I liked the bit when they went to a barn and found a shot down plane pilot named Peter. Of course he would have been scared, not only because he was an enemy but because there was an elephant and a woman with a pitch fork threatening him. A few people laughed at the pilot’s reaction because it was such a strange situation.
How they put the performance on was very good. The fact that it was one woman acting out a man, two girls and an elephant for over an hour with no break, remembering all the lines shocked me. Although there was one actress, it felt that everybody was there. The actress was wearing big dungarees and a shirt and work men’s boots for all these parts. She stepped to one side so you would know who she was being.
The set was also very simple, there were two stools and a circular mat and a 2D elephant model, but the lighting they used was quite good, because that gave me the full effect of place, weather and time of day. When the lights shone on the elephant model you could see the shadows.
I give this production ten out of ten for being great.
Ben, Year 7
