THE shoes for the Lyceum Youth Theatre's latest summer on stage production might be bright red, patent leather heels, but director Natalie Ibu says it is the darkness of the story of the Red Shoes which drew her to it.
The Hans Christian Anderson original is the story of a girl who chooses a pair of red shoes over everything else and against the advice of all around her.
She puts on her shoes and dances around until she "can't take it no more", when she seeks r
efuge from a pastor - who denies her until she agrees to cut her own feet off.
"It's a heavy piece and really dark," says Ibu with glee. "But absolutely delicious in its richness and its tale of a strong girl who knows what she wants and will do anything to get it, despite the fact that she is consistently warned against it."
The challenge for Ibu and her writer, Emma Rosoman, has been to re-imagine the fairystory as a contemporary tale, one which is relevant to the members of the LYT and their audience.
"It doesn't have a happy ending," she explains. "I really wanted to fight against this happy ending, so we got something really dark and angsty, but with a sense of redemption at the end.
"We have a attempted to make it a contemporary tale for now, but one that celebrates and embraces the fact that this is a fairytale.
"Magic can happen in fairytales and large leaps in narrative, but we are also trying to hook onto the things that are real. So that is about desire, that want for something that you shouldn't have. Despite knowing it is wrong that thing is too delicious, - too sexy for want of a better word - to be able to stop yourself."
Unlike the girl in the fairytale, Ibu has been urged on by all around her in her own chosen career of theatre director. The 24- year-old from Slateford says she jumped at the LYT commission because youth theatre is where she started, in a youth theatre in Oxgangs. But it is just the latest in a steady escalation of theatre work since she graduated from Leicester university.
"I just recently won the ITV directors award, so I am going to the Royal Court for a year which is pretty exciting," she says.
"The day after Red Shoes comes down I am off to London. It was a nationwide competition open to emerging directors. They had 250 applications, then they selected three people to spend a year with the host theatre. It's a modest bursary to cover your expenses but your are resident with the company for a year.
"I've had lots of short-term residencies at places like the Citizens, over the last year, but it is really important to get a sense of an organisation, especially as I want to be an artistic director in the future. So this is a really privileged situation."
Before leaving for London, Ibu is confident that the two dozen ten to 15-year-olds in her charge at the Lyceum will be ready for curtain up. Indeed, she and Rosoman were so impressed with the group that Rosoman rewrote some of the chorus scenes in response to the group's performances in rehearsal.
Unlike the story itself, it seems that some sort of happy ending is on the cards for both the production and for Natalie Ibu as a director. She is certainly one to watch for the future.
•
The Red Shoes Re-Heeled and The Other Red Shoes, Royal Lyceum, Grindlay Street, tonight and tomorrow, 7.30pm, £12 (£6), 0131-248 4848The full article contains 620 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
