UNRAVELLED YARNS

"When people told themselves their past with stories, explained their present with stories, foretold their future with stories ... the best place by the fire was kept for The StoryTeller ..."

The Storyteller (John Hurt) and his dog (Brian Henson)

It's difficult to sum up the attraction of this series. There are many wonderful aspects to it. The subtlety of production as people move in weird and strange lands, fading to nothing more than silhouettes on cracked plates or shadows passing across tapestries in the dimness; the haunting music which stirs so many diverse feelings; the clever, but not over-used, puppetry talents of Jim Henson's team to create things which could otherwise remain only as dreams; the spectacle of seeing the famous and acclaimed acting their hearts out in often the most bizarre or ridiculous or rôles; the confined world of the candlelight that shimmers into the darkness around it, where live trolls and ogres and witches ...

But the real miracle has to be the cleverness of the scripts crafted lovingly by Anthony Minghella, a playwright for whom this gem of 1988 was a new and different departure which at first he was so reluctant to take. The words have no bounds, almost defying capture by any dictionary and weave a richly evocative atmosphere as the wrinkled StoryTeller, played so perfectly by John Hurt, announces in his cracked voice that we should "Imagine a dark night, a cold night. A night like this one ..." as he launches into "the best story there is to tell. A story that begins in hello and ends in goodbye."

Nowhere Man

For the StoryTeller has no rules to stick to, no patterns to obey. This is a man who may be many centuries old, and full of myths and legends from many lands, knowing how to vary them each time into something a little different and what captivates the minds and emotions of those from small children to the adults, equally as entranced by seeing all the folk tales and fairy stories of their childhood suddenly brought to life.

The stories are in fact emotions stripped raw, or very thinly disguised within the narrative. The StoryTeller's choice of words is sharp and precise; princesses as sweet as cherry Pie, witches who break threads with their teeth, trolls, creatures so revolting they can't even stand each other, and of how love can overcome evil, bringing fear to the hearts of those who fear not, and wearing away the iron shoes of a princess to nothing as she searches for the husband she betrayed.

Some tales are more effective than others. "Some good, some funny. Some indifferent," says our host when thrown before a King. Oh yes my deerios, the StoryTeller, our weaver of dreams, himself appears in some of his ancient yarns and knows many a fine fellow, such as the soldier who captured death in a sack or the creature which became a princess. Some tales are easily recognisable in other forms. Lucky's venture to the island of the Griffin to gain a golden feather and treasure resembles Jack's quest up the beaststalk, and the fitting of a glass shoe onto the feet of an ugly thing made all of fur and leaves proves that the Scraggletag is indeed the princess with whom the prince danced until the clock struck twelve, and who finally found happiness despite the scheming of her terribly and ugly Badsisters.

Many tales rely on love or injustice to stir up the spirit of the listener, for example, the story of a woman's desperate desire for a child even "if it were ugly as a hedgehog". Taunted by the children and repulsed by his father, Grovelhog finally leaves home to live in solitude with his friends the animals. "His mother felt a crack faulting her heart, like a tiny pencil line and with each hour the pencil line grew thicker and thicker until one day, not long after, her heart split in half ..." The tale of the Grovelhog is indeed a rich tale to tell.

Young Fearnot's problem is overcome in what seems an obvious way at the conclusion of his quest, but still allows those with older and wiser heads to sit enraptured, quietly nodding at the end of the unravelled yarn that this was the obvious ending for the lad to travel towards. Likewise, we all know in our hearts that on the third visit of the magical lion, or the third night of the princess' vigil to see her gruesome husband shed his coat of spines, or the third night of the grand ball, that something wondrous or dreadful will happen to shatter the happy pattern which has been built up by the previous pair. Three magic things the true bride tempts the trollop with, and three nights she sees her husband; three fine dresses for the princess who must marry her own father; three places where the giant claims his heart is hidden and it is not until three years, three months, three weeks and three days have passed that the lonely princess can speak, lest her brothers remain in wracking pain as terrible ravens. Even when her babies are stolen away from her by the evil witch, she cannot speak of her innocence, but instead digs a hole in the ground with her hands and screams her pain into the earth until morning comes.

Mystery and Imagination

The grotesque also feature in these tales, but not so much that they are no longer for the ears of small children. There are chuckles as the rough and stupid cook enters into the gamble with the sly beggar which he cannot win. "Blow away two of these straws and leave the middle one where it is?" he exclaims. It can't be done. He's not a fool and by holding the straws in place with a finger apiece, the beggar succeeds in his claim. Not one to lose a bet, the cook claims he can do likewise, but when he blows, oh dearie, he blows his fingers clean off his hand. Not that there's any blood spilling or gore mind you, for that would not be proper, nor is there when, seconds later in a further bet, he accidentally rips one of his ears from the side of his head.

The tale of how a story was lost and when it was found is indeed one of the best that the StoryTeller has to tell and one can imagine it still being told to this day. "For the King will hear no other. Only it's changed now. The wife comes back to the StoryTeller. The StoryTeller becomes King. You know how it is in stories ..."

We know that the Storyteller lives to tell his own past, but the adventure he passes through in the castle on the three-hundred-and-sixty-fifth day of his punishment is a true nightmare, a gift, as he later realises, given to him by the beggar with whom he once shared a soup made from nothing but a stone and hot water (with just a touch of stock, meat, salt and vegetable). It seems that his luck has finally run out as his temptation, itching away at his soul, causes him to gamble away all he has including his human form as his spirit tumbles from one form to another. "This morning a man blessed. By mid-day, a flea! This does not bode well for the evening ..."

A Portrait of The Storyteller (John Hurt)

Riddles are cast for the audience to solve. The old boatman, imprisoned for eternity to ferry the foolish and the wise alike to the island of the Griffin, how can he ever leave his lifelong post? And the answer, when it comes as answers must with time, is not one which needs great wisdom to find, but more relative simplicity. "And nature my dears is a wise woman who pays us back, tit for tat."

Indeed nature is not one to be trifled with. Another jewel in the crown of the StoryTeller is of the good soldier on his way back from the wars with only three dry biscuits. A poor beggar, worn to a whisper, gives him a pack of cards that can never lose for him, and a sack which will capture anything ordered into it and the soldier sets out to do good and kind deeds, clearing a castle once owned by the Tzar from the devils, tiny red demons who play cards all night long.

The demons are creatures of pure evil. They cheat all night, and yet still lose hand over hand since the good soldier has the beggar's cards to play for him. And how they fumed, "the sort of fume only devils can fume" because they wanted to take things from him. "I want his soul!" "I want his whistle!" "I want his teeth!"

And the tale continues, walking its way on a path which one continually believes is about to reach its destination when it reaches the top of the final hill to see a whole new and even richer land stretching out before it. For the devils show the soldier how to see death itself, and how to save people from its grip. Before long, the soldier has death a prisoner in his sack, tied up and hung at the end of the furthest branch on the furthest tree at the end of the world.

"Nothing could die. The oddest battles ensued! There were wars going on in most places and they were very strange. At the end of a day's carnage, nobody had died! The armies would look at each other, exhausted and intact. Crossed lovers would throw themselves off cliffs and have a long climb back. Duels at dawn went on till midnight when the rivals would go home confused."

And so the soldier finally came to see that the good he felt he had done turned into a curse and so justice turns to injustice, but, like the prince whose arm was to remain forever as the stinging wing of a raven, we should not mind nor complain ... for the StoryTeller does not!

Black and Blue

Grotesque, and yet with an air of humour. Yes, that is how the StoryTeller manages to enthral with tales of evil and creatures from the darkness of this world; the Troll and Trollop which are fearful and cruel to look at, and yet find themselves contradictory and even unable to speak their word properly. We know that such a vile creature, such a stupid creature, such a lumbering creature must be overcome by some good and so release the poor orphan whose back is beaten into a contradiction of shades of black and blue by the Troll's contradicting stick, and the Griffin, an awesome and huge figure of feathers and beak living alone on a distant isle, is shown to be not so terrible as rumour rumours and hearsay says, but a rather pampered and spoilt creature who although can sniff out the snuffle of a man in his castle, still demands comforting and a scratch and scratch again to abate an itch in its hide. For he is a sensitive monster. "Not monster?" it decides in its whinnying voice after a moments thought. "Beastie," says the little man, its servant, pacifying the towering master which he scritches and scratches to please and soothe. Then its mind turns again, "Not beastie!" The Griffin says it is a bird, a very nice bird, a poor misunderstood bird.

There is the Half-Man, nothing more than a chest and head heaving itself around the cold flagging floor of its castle on its hands, so sure that it can win a new set of legs by triumphing in a game of skittles. "No gout? Corns? Blisters? Footrot?" it queries, checking the merchandise before embarking on the gamble of bowling a skull at the awaiting bones. The devils, so confident, so sharp, so eager to take all the soldier has, must also face the loss of their very freedom. But death, silent and staring with eyes as freezing as diamonds on the coldest night, is a far more frightening opponent for our hero; and the witch, the vile witch who entrances the mourning king by wearing the likeness of his wife, so recently taken from the land of the living. Cackling when she laughs she sets all dangers for the three children who, by their existence, stand between her and the throne. She pours over a huge book of words that cannot be read in her dusty and web-coated tower, and a pot bubbling with gases which sting the eyes; and from coarse, sharp, evil black thread she weaves shirts for her stepchildren, tying them in place on the young princes incanting "The shirts will hurt, the wings will sting, the beaks will shriek, the eyes will cry."

The bizarre and ordinary rub shoulders in these lands. This is where a hog-boy can play the bagpipes - music which begins in hello and ends in goodbye - and ride saddled upon a giant rooster who is his loyal friend when men and even his father turn against him. This is where lions can spring from the hopes and fears of a young girl's mind and achieve impossible tasks, drinking dry rivers and constructing vast palaces; where the seventh son of a seventh son inherits all the luck foretold in prophecy to protect him from the evil plots and plans of a king who would have him thrown off a cliff into the sea and chopped into a thousand pieces; where man can be at one with the animals of this world, who will bring twigs and bracken and feathers and fur to turn a gorgeous beauty of a girl into a shambling lump of blackness that steals away from riches and glory to scrub floors and have her heart impaled by insults from the prince whom she comes to love so dearly; where magic is one of the basic elements from which life is composed.

And now the StoryTeller rests, his knobbly brows knitted deep in thought as his mind scurries to find new tales to spin, and his inquisitive dog bemoans its empty belly as it lies on the coal floor, playing with a sack that may once have held death, trying to sniff out a shoe worn away to nothing and longing, oh longing so much for some of the wonderful soup made from a stone.

A lavishly illustrated book, "THE STORYTELLER", written superbly by Anthony Minghella from his nine scripts was been published by Boxtree Limited. 144 pages, £6.95. Published December 1988. Also available from Channel 5 were two videotapes comprising the first four episodes as transmitted by Channel 4. The tapes run to 48 minutes in stereo dolby and comprise the episodes "The Soldier and Death" & "Fearnot" on CFV 07542 and "A Story Short" and "The Luck Child" on CFV 07532. Each tape costs £9.99.

to THE STORYTELLER Episode Guide

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