I went to see the Birmingham Stage Company’s production of “Gangsta Granny” at the New Theatre in Cardiff. David Walliams is one of my favourite authors. I loved the book Gangsta Granny and thoroughly enjoyed the television adaptation of it so I was looking forward to this very much.
The story is about Ben visiting his granny who he finds to be very boring until she starts to tell him stories about her adventures as a jewellery thief when she was younger. Suddenly Ben finds his granny really exciting and he sets about hatching a plan for them to steal the Crown Jewels together. But Ben’s parents have other ideas – their dream is for Ben to be a champion dancer like their heroes on “Strictly Stars Dancing” and not a jewel thief!
I thought that the set was very clever. It consisted of three large boxes which had various openings, drawers etc which were unfolded to make different scenes. For example one of the boxes was, at different points, Raj’s shop, Ben’s classroom and the family’s living room. The cast themselves carried out most of the set changes and this worked well.
There were lots of costume changes which really added to the show. When Ben had a dream we saw his parents dressed up as giant dancing cabbages and his granny dressed up as a spoon. Ben’s mother made him various costumes for the dance competition including dressing Ben up as a Quality Street chocolate, as a cooked breakfast, as a blossoming tree and as a love bomb. The costumes were all really funny as was Ben’s dancing!
The music added to the show too and one of my favourite bits was when Ben got his granny to join him in a “Gangsta rap”. There was a lot of music throughout the show especially during the set changes and I thought that this worked really well.
The ending was really sad as, like in the book, Ben’s granny became poorly and died and my little sister Megan, who is six, was upset by this. But overall it was a really happy and funny story and Megan, eight year old Rhydian and I laughed a lot!
I thought that the cast were all excellent. They looked like they were having a lot of fun! I definitely had a lot of fun watching the show and would recommend it to all my friends!