Cornucopia Radio, November 2011
A Christmas entertainment from the Sheffield-based outfit, containing
a pot-pourri of allusions to traditional children's nursery-rhymes and fairy tales - Little Miss Muffet,
Solomon Grundy, Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The story was a simple one: the Lieutenant (Christopher
Bellamy) and his sidekick Joe (Ian Carter), were trying to solve a particular case, and ended up interrogating a variety
of characters including Granny (Renate Reynolds), Little Red Riding Hood (Philomena McLean), and the Big Bad Wolf (Phil Mason).
Eventually it turned out that Granny and Little Red Riding Hood were gangsters in disguise - part of an international cartel
hoping to flood the Enchanted Forest with drugs masquerading as curds and whey.
Charles Gosden's script contained a fair share of earthy jokes (the police officers
found that they had no Vaseline to conduct a full body search, so decided to use Deep Heat instead), and metatheatrical
references (at one point a character admitted that he knew what would happen next as he had previously read the
script). Other allusions to products such as Steradent kept the drama firmly grounded in the contemporary world - even
though the strains of the nursery-rhyme "London Bridge is Falling Down" could be heard throughout the drama. Rex Davis'
narrator provided an introduction and conclusion to the tale; he admitted rather bitterly that he "only had about ten words"
to say, implicitly blaming writer Gosden for the smallness of his role.
Peter Beeston's production proved an enjoyable romp, even if the detectives' accents
were more South Yorkshire than America's Deep South (or was it New York's South Side?).
