The Trials of Magnus Coffinkey ⭐⭐⭐⭐
“A broken fairy tale for broken people. In a whimsical land of broken toys, Magnus Coffinkey must fix a bell atop an impossibly high spire. Success will make his wish come true. The price of failure is a permanently broken heart. Funny, honest and deeply devastating, The Trials of Magnus Coffinkey is a dark fairy tale where the power of storytelling is used to make sense of great personal trauma.”
Some stories use fairy tales simply because they look pretty. The Trials of Magnus Coffinkey uses one because sometimes reality is too painful to look at directly. This is a beautifully constructed piece of theatre that takes the language of broken toys, impossible towers, magical bells and strange creatures and uses it to explore something much more human underneath. It is whimsical without becoming twee, devastating without becoming emotionally manipulative, and (most importantly) it understands exactly what it wants to say.
Philip Leone-Ganado's direction is beautifully handled and demonstrates a clear understanding of the production’s theatrical language. I particularly loved the distinctions between the different characters and the feeling of purpose behind every movement. Nothing feels like it is happening simply because the performers need something to do. The physical choices have meaning, and that is especially impressive when the actors are moving between characters and moments at such speed. There is a lovely rhythm to the storytelling, too. The production knows when to allow a moment to sit and when to move quickly into the next piece of the fairy tale. That clarity is essential because the story deals with two realities at once, and the direction makes sure we never lose sight of either.
Angéle Galea's production design is wonderfully restrained. The centrepiece is essentially a huge trunk filled with costumes and props, but it becomes so much more than simply somewhere to store the production’s belongings. It becomes part of the storytelling. I loved the cleverness of how items are taken from it and transformed into new characters, locations, and moments. Rather than filling the stage with a huge collection of scenery, the production asks us to use our imagination, and the audience is more than willing to do so.
Angéle Galea's costume design is beautiful, and I always appreciate a production that fully commits to its costume world. Here, however, the commitment doesn’t mean endless costume changes or enormous amounts of scenery. Instead, the performers begin with base costumes and then add one or two carefully selected pieces to transform into entirely different characters. It is remarkably effective. Given how quickly the story moves between characters, it would be easy for the transformations to become confusing. They never do. Each character has such a strong visual identity that we immediately understand who we are watching.
Sam Edmunds's lighting design is rich and detailed, with a wonderful range of dynamic states. The lighting does a huge amount of work in establishing the different locations and helping us understand which world we are currently inhabiting. I particularly loved the state when Magnus is neither quite dead nor properly alive. There is something strikingly eerie about the lighting at these moments, creating a transitional space which feels neither entirely fantastical nor completely real. The use of colour is wonderful, too. It helps create the fairy-tale atmosphere without making the production feel overly bright or childish. I also really liked the side bar lighting. They add another layer to the visual composition and create gorgeous silhouettes and textures across the stage.
Music by Angéle Galea is similarly well judged. It supports the fairy-tale atmosphere without eclipsing the storytelling, and a lovely sense of melancholy runs underneath it. The music understands that this isn’t simply a whimsical story. Something much darker lies under the surface, and the score helps us feel it even before the production fully reveals it.
The book by Malcolm Galea and Angéle Galea is where the production’s real ingenuity lies. The premise is fascinating: a fairy tale created to imitate what the real-world characters are experiencing emotionally. The fictional story isn’t simply an escape from reality, it becomes the language through which the characters can begin to understand reality. That is such a clever theatrical device. The writing also deserves enormous credit for how carefully it handles grief. This is incredibly difficult material, but the production never leans so heavily into the emotion that it becomes manipulative. Instead, it lets the fairy-tale metaphor do some of the emotional work. The broken toys, the broken heart, the impossible task and the desire to fix something that perhaps cannot be fixed all become part of one larger idea.
Becky Camilleri and Joseph Zammit deliver brilliant performances. Each character is so well defined, which is no easy feat when the performers move among roles so quickly. The physicality is particularly impressive. A change in posture, a movement or a tiny alteration in the way a character holds themselves can be enough to tell us that someone entirely different has arrived. The vocal work is equally strong. The shifts in voice are wonderfully clear and help create distinct characters without ever becoming caricatures. Both performances also have real emotional honesty. The actors aren’t simply demonstrating how many characters they can play; they are using those characters to tell the larger story.
The Trials of Magnus Coffinkey is a beautiful example of what theatre can do when storytelling is used not simply to entertain, but to make sense of something almost impossible to articulate.nIt takes grief and puts it inside a fairy tale. It takes trauma and gives it characters. It takes something that cannot be fixed and creates a story in which someone desperately tries to fix it anyway. And that is what makes the production so moving. There is real elegance in the restraint of the design, the accuracy of the performances, and the clarity of the direction. Nothing is unnecessarily complicated, but everything has purpose.
The Trials of Magnus Coffinkey plays at the Red Lecture Theatre at Summerhall until the 31 August at 10:30 and runs approximately 75 minutes.
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