Are You Sitting Comfortably? In an audience with cosy blankets and bars of chocolate, evocative of your own warm living room back at home, I can’t imagine that anyone could be uncomfortable! Eloїse Poulton’s recreation of four of Roald Dahl’s most kitsch, flesh-creeping but fun stories for adults promises to be an absolutely fantastic production. Lucky enough to be privy to the secret knowledge of the four titles which have been carefully selected to go into this single piece, I can admire the creative skill with which Eloїse has chosen each story and woven all four together. With ease she has envisioned a play that moves its audience from light-hearted comedy to sombre tones in a mash-up of emotional responses to various Dahlian dilemmas. Presented through flashes of film, live music, recorded sound-tracks, multi-rolled characters, and organised by a creative and original team, this play certainly does promise to offer a five-night party on stage while capturing the weird and wonderful visceral life of Dahl and his work.

Dahl’s ‘womb-like’ shed-world of his creations is present as I walk into the Corpus Playroom, ready to meet the cast and crew. They are setting about arranging the lighting, sound and technical cues while on stage, enacting a scene that I immediately burst into laughter on first seeing only to realise its deathly reality later. Such is the juxtaposing quality of Dahl’s tales: they induce hilarity at the most absurd things, and invite his audience to chuckle away to themselves before guiltily realising the serious nature of the scene that they have just witnessed.

The child-like perspective through which Dahl believed he saw the world invites us to see his play in a similarly fun and honest way – indulging in the rude, disgusting, gruesome and coarse humour of children that we, as adults, dismiss in self-reproving reminders that we must ‘grow up’ and stop laughing. These stories offer us this chance to see the world differently, through a ‘half-civilised’ children’s lens. Language, as Dahl points out, is like a wheel, offering us a plethora of ever-changing perspectives and different angles that keep changing and turning. It revolves round us, shaping us, constantly evolving. This is certainly present in the cast's varied approaches to the text, as well as altering audience views of Dahl’s brutally honest scenes. Yet, with the childish lens and ‘half-civilised’ mind, the brutal honesty, although overtly dark and dirty, is offered through oxymoronic positivity, expressing potential redemption and glimmers of hope through the eventual cathartic release.

It is a project that “has wormed its way into every corner of my mind,” says director Eloїse Poulton, as she tells me about her process of adaptation. I can definitely believe that, for it does offer so many different angles, opinions and scenarios. Yet the cast have reacted well to this vast diversity and have “absolutely sunk their teeth into the weirdness, and amaze me with the inventiveness,” continues Eloїse, as she busily manages the get-in for the show. I am lucky enough to meet a few of the cast and crew members who tell me a little more about the theme of women that lingers throughout all four plays. The role of women is highly linked to Dahl’s own experiences, a traceable heritage portrayed by all four plays: the audience are faced with tales of oppression, domesticity and a difficulty in presenting women when looking at potential ethical dilemmas. Amiya Nagpal, the creative consultant responsible for the weird and wonderful costumes and the sparky publicity, says: “this production really does question just how comfortably you should be sitting in the theatre.”

With many roles doubled-up, the cast must undergo sudden character changes, channelling vastly different personalities as well as transforming from humans into abstracts and even animals. This performance really does challenge its actors and actresses: not only in their ability to demonstrate different traits, but also to move through the caricatures that Dahl is famed for. It is full of colour and, due to the text itself being rich and symbolic, each character becomes symbolically significant. Laura Pujos enlightened me further about her experience working on the project: “it’s hard to move from one extreme emotion to the next suddenly […] one moment I’m grieving my husband’s loss very expressively and then the next I’m busy scheming further murders!” Such variety in a single scene is hard to capture but really does promise such great entertainment and enjoyment for its audience.

With such an intriguing premise, an inventive set, and a fun and creative cast, this show really does promise take you on a whirlwind through Dahl’s short stories from the perspective of a young child: the audience is given the opportunity to re-experience the indiscriminate laughter and fun of mixed pleasures and despairs, before stepping out into the cold night air, back into the adult world outside the Playroom.

Are You Sitting Comfortably? is on from Tuesday 8th to Saturday 12th November at Corpus Playroom.