Three times Hairline Highlights Award winners Les Enfants Terribles are back for another run at this year’s Fringe Festival, bringing their 2007 hit The Terrible Infants, a show which they say feature ‘short morality stories about nasty children who meet nasty ends in a very Tim Burton way’ and which last year we described as a ‘blend of the Brothers Grimm’s fantasy, a bit of Roald Dahl’s imagination and some of Tim Burton’s prose and visuals’. But despair not, the show has gone through some remodelling, so if you saw it last year, there is no excuse not to go again in the next three weeks.
The biggest change comes from the inclusion of a segment where Dame Judy Dench narrates one of the two new stories. ‘After last years Edinburgh we were invited to perform the show at a Cancer Research event where Judi Dench happened to come along’, the group explain. ‘She absolutely loved the show and told us afterwards that she wanted to help and get involved in anyway. So when we sat down to extend, change and improve the show we wrote a new story and we thought hard about how we wanted this story to be different from the others. Someone suggested it might work well as a voice over and we liked the idea and there was only one person who we wanted to do it - and she agreed!’
But Judy Dench’s new section is not the only change in the play, The new version has a lot more of the actors performing music, breaking the divide between actors and musicians that existed in last year’s play ‘Last years version had a clear division between the band and the actors whereas this year we have mixed the rolls so the performers all play instruments and all act’, Les Enfants Terribles tell us. But, where did the idea of The Terrible Infants show come from? How did all these amazing little stories and incredible puppets appear? ‘When my co producer Oliver Lansley set the company up in 2002 he asked his friend, the show’s designer, Sam Wyer, to create some funny characters for our website’, explains co-producer James Seager. ‘Sam drew these weird and wonderful cartoon characters that we then put up on line. Over the years we did a our shows up in Edinburgh and beyond until in 2006 Oli thought it might be a good idea to base a show around the characters that were on our website; and the Terrible Infants were born’. So, in a way, The Terrible Infants have been around as long as Les Enfants Terribles have existed!
Finally, we had to know. What do they do when they are not on stage? How do they spend their Fringe? ‘We are always busy during the festival which is great’, answer James, ‘we never have a moment to relax but I would prefer this than have a lot of time on our hands. Thankfully all of our shows in Edinburgh have gone extremely well which means that we are always doing something; photo calls, interviews, chasing promoters or producers, flyering for the show, advertising the show, thinking of ways to promote it further - always a busy time!’. With all those things to do, one wonders if they get a breather!
All the hard work does pay off, though. With an amazing run with The Terrible Infants in 2007, this year’s Fringe seems to be just as good. Here, in Hairline, we do recommend you go and see them. As we said last year ‘Missing a show by Les Enfants Terribles would normally constitute somewhat of a sacrilege, but missing The Terrible Infants should be penalised by law’.
Adrian G. Velazquez
