Before I start this review, I would like everybody reading this to imagine a time when they’ve just bought a brand new video game or board game, especially as a young child. You’re excited to open it, try it out, show it off. But, when you open the game, it’s a jarring blur of colour and words that may as well have been written in Ancient Greek. You really want to ‘get it’. You’ve been looking forward to this for so long! And then, after some patience (or lack thereof) the pieces slot together in your mind. Picture the euphoric “Ah! Yes!” moment,
and how you felt- everything makes sense. Now, you and anyone who cares to join in can enjoy this together. Yes, that’s exactly what you want- you want to share this. This is like my experience of Castle Builder.
I sat down in the Palace Theatre expecting something somewhat pretentious and quite forgettable. My one and only previous experience with Castle Builder was a friend who’d seen it telling me, “The whole time, this guy is making a wood sculpture in the back. You get to see it at the end, it’s really cool.”
I’ll try my best to coherently piece all my thoughts about this together. Something that really stood out to me was a message one of the artists gave before the show really began. He pointed around the theatre at the ‘do not film or take photographs’ signs and proceeded to reassure us that we were completely free to do anything we wanted with our phones during any point of the performance. Take calls, film, text, anything. I’d not ever experienced this level of informality and casualness from a theatre show before. I was really
intrigued about what would come next. Castle Builder starts off incredibly jarringly. There’s just no other way to describe it. It’s completely unintelligible. Honestly, I thought I was in for something that was pretentious and allegorical to the point of it being absolutely meaningless to everybody outside of the people actively involved in it. The pacing was breakneck fast- there was no time at all to digest what had just happened before the next thing had abruptly begun. Despite this, I watched on avidly, consistently feeling like I was just one piece of information away from understanding what in the hell was going on. Right at the beginning, one of the main guys on stage half-chews a bit of plain sliced bread, takes it out of his mouth, makes a weird shape out of it with his hands, and sets it down at the side proudly. Yes, proudly. Yes, it’s just as gross as I describe it. And, yes, believe it or not, this becomes important later. There’s a short little song, during which things get smashed up for no reason in particular. Remember this though, guys. Even if I didn’t know what was going on, this was actually quite entertaining.
Later on, we hear about the story of Jim Bishop- our first and primary castle builder. He hates politicians, religion, the government, and he takes off his trousers angrily when people film him. We already have so much in common! Jim Bishop is the owner of a massive, very impressive castle which has taken him decades to build by hand and still hasn’t finished. It’s made quite clear that Jim Bishop has some form of mental difficulty, even if this is played for laughs to some extent. I’m spectacularly unobservant, so even after this I still hadn’t quite figured out what message Castle Builder was trying to send me. After this came the point where Castle Builder really did almost reduce me to tears. One of the two main guys on stage sits in a chair with a spotlight on him, the rest of the stage darkened, and sings a song called ‘Visionary’. I know this because I’m actually listening to it on Spotify as I write this review. The way I interpreted this song was that it was a beautiful interpretation of the weight and toll of existing and leaving behind a mark. This is quite a stark contrast to someone making chewed up bread shapes earlier, but it’s not unwelcome.
The song also describes making your existence your own… and thus begins the “Ah! Yes!” moment I described at the beginning. Using different castle builders as examples of ordinary and even mentally impaired people really living out their lives and leaving behind a great, grand legacy like a handmade castle is truly inspirational. Next, the artists tell us a couple more anecdotes about castle builders- although the word, ‘anecdote’ doesn’t really do it justice. One is about an old man who decorates his entire house with broken crockery. The other is about a veteran who creates little moving sculptures as he slowly goes blind. It just further illustrated, to me, that anybody can do anything with
themselves. Anybody can leave anything behind. Afterwards, every single light in the theatre turned off and we, the audience members, were encouraged to all turn on our mobile phone lights while a lovely song about tiny lights was
played. It’s a cliché, but I felt like all of us were all united together at that moment. You’ll have to forgive me, because at this point, my brain got tired from trying to think about the deep insight behind everything so far. Really, I was transfixed by the beauty of about fifty tiny lights all moving side to side along to an innocent-sounding song about somebody shining their tiny light out into a world of darkness. Maybe that’s a deep insight in itself. That’s for you to decide. After the main theatre lights, sadly, came back on, we hear about a couple more castle builders. I won’t spoil exactly what happens- but one castle builder makes a giant castle out of tiny pebbles that he found on the street and put into his pocket. This is followed by a song, which I have to admit pales in comparison to the previous ones. Next comes my personal
favourite castle builder- a lovely old lady who has sadly passed away (I think). The rough notes I made during the performance say that she “made big sh*t out of bottles”, so take from that what you will. This lady gets her own song, too, which includes a little extract from a lullaby that she really sung. This sounds absolutely lovely and works really well in the song. At this next point of the show, the breakneck fast opening to the performance really starts to
make sense. Our next and final castle builder described in detail is called Olaf, and just like at the beginning, he smashes everything to bits. Because of this, he gets institutionalised. In this hospital, people make these stunningly intricate statues and art made out of plain, half chewed bread- hmm, where have we seen this before? I’m quite frustrated that I didn’t write down the reason why they did this, because it was really insightful and made sense, but I do vaguely remember that it was to mock the current artists at the time. This is the next “Ah! Yes!” moment- when you realise what the beginning of the show is really trying to illustrate the mind of somebody who has descended into madness. Anyway, Olaf is no longer deemed a danger to others, so he’s allowed to leave the hospital when he likes to, and comes back at a certain time. The staff at the hospital didn’t really ask what he did every day. What they absolutely didn’t expect was that Olaf was stealing rocks from some place important and using them to build his own massive castle. This story in
particular does end sadly, and I think it does a great job of illustrating that the world isn’t made of cookie cutter good things and bad things- which is a trope I vehemently hate. Castle Builder finishes on a snappy montage of different people who made castles, too, and a deeply moving song about the ‘spirit of creation’. Bread is thrown out to the audience. Some of the people who got bread actually made their own gross little saliva bread shapes and set
them on the stage, which was strangely endearing. And, yes- we do get to see the wooden statue that was being made in the background throughout the whole show. It’s also worth noting that this statute is made out of the broken bits that were smashed in the jarring opening
of Castle Builder. It’s quite incredible. It’s entirely safe to say that Castle Builder soared and flew lightyears above my expectations even
if that wasn’t very hard in the first place. I was prepared for something flashy and mediocre, and what I was blessed with was an emotional and heartfelt project of hard work. Something I frequently notice in media nowadays is that things like films are only made because somebody was just given the opportunity to create it- whether that’s because it’ll make money, or just for the experience in itself. I’m not at all saying that these are bad reasons to make art. They are, in fact, quite valid. But there’s a big element of shallowness. When I watch a high budget Hollywood movie, for example, I can’t help but think that nobody was really passionate about this. It was just made to generate some kind of profit. This is why I loved Castle Builder so much. What a breath of fresh air, to watch a well-thought-out show that was made because somebody felt that they had a story that they needed
to tell, or a message to spread! These artists, obscure but not recent, didn’t have anything massive to gain from this, except the satisfaction of having inspired a group of people to view the world around them a little differently. How refreshing. How charming. How incredible. See Castle Builder if you have the chance.
This sounds brilliant!