Flint Street Nativity: A Review

by Les May

I WAS looking forward to first night of the second offering of the season from Rochdale’s Curtain Theatre, Flint Street Nativity.  Did it live up to my (high) expectations?  Well, almost.

An adult theatre group, playing children to an audience which had a fair sprinkling of Primary School teachers amongst its members, who between them must have been involved in dozens of such happenings, was always going to be a challenge, especially as many of the cast had to appear a second time as their parent later in the play.

The first twenty minutes or so I found baffling.  I much prefer to laugh with children not at them.  It was I suppose intended to ‘set the scene’ by recapitulating the rehearsals and introducing us to the different personalities of the children.  I found myself longing for Michael Winner to rise from the grave and say ‘Calm down dear’ or an Ofsted inspection to take place.

Things changed once ‘The Christmas Story’, or at least the Flint Street version of it, got underway.  There was the expected humour of the ‘child’ cast being in the wrong place on the stage, being too shy to speak their lines, bizarre farm animals and upside down babies.  But some of the funniest pieces were from the innocent honesty of some of ‘the children’, verbal misunderstandings, and new words to old carols.

After the one king with two presents, bath salts and myrrh, had found her way to the baby Jesus, who by this time was looking rather the worse for wear, it only needed Herod and his cardboard castle to round off the story.   But it didn’t finish there.

In the final scene we were invited to the meet the parents over glasses of punch and hear the prejudices they had handed on to their children.  And what a bunch they were!

But that wasn’t really the end, because Tim’s dad appears in the playground and we are fleetingly invited to the darker side of Christmas for some parents.   If you are unfortunate enough to recognise him, just remember miracles do sometimes happen at Christmas.  Honestly they really do.

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