Rachel Rose Reid looked a bit like the doll that twirls to twinkly music in a music box, in red and white floral dress with bodice and full skirt, blonde crinkly hair tied up in a bun, and black heels. This was an appropriate choice for one living in fairytales but lacked provocation. Still, as soon as she introduced herself, her voice easily commanded attention worthy of her confident stance before quite a crowd.
What followed was over an hour and fifteen minutes of amazingly fast-paced unrelenting performance storytelling, in which she cleverly wove tales of her own love affairs with Hans Christian Andersen’s, interspersed with versions of his much-loved stories.
She was an erudite and marvellous performer, never fluffing what must have been thousands and thousands of words she has evidently remembered by heart, and the audience remained entranced throughout.
However, it would have been interesting to see some epiphany, some letting down of her hair, as she progressed through her own rite of passage. A song she sang (beautifully!) at the end was the only departure from a consistent intonation.
That her set never shifted from its initial perspective on her relationships, evidently all doomed in the first 60 seconds, served to keep her potential under wraps, also robbing us of hope. She did relate some occasions when she had been coaxed out of her protective shell, yet here she remained wound up and immature which jarred with her stories’ potential to convey wisdom.
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