(left to right) Oliver Wilson, Rob Rhys Bond, Lee Hithersay
The Story Forge is one of the funniest, daftest and most unique family-friendly shows around. With the perfect mix of scripted and improvised jokes, it’s a play that’s different and fresh every time.
The show follows two mad professors (Lee Hithersay as Professor Doctor and Robert Rhys Bond as Doctor Professor) who forge three new myths using the unhinged minds of their audience and a load of inventive cardboard props.
With bucketfuls of entertainment for kids and parents alike, it is non-stop silliness from start to end that will have you reeling.
The perfect comedic timing and joyous crowd work, combined with live music and absurd tales, it’s like nothing you have ever seen before.
The show at The Atkinson in Southport on April 17 started off with a short origin of the seaside town.
The professors asked a young girl in the audience where she lived, her surname, street address, and the three digits on the back of mummy’s credit card, which garnered a laugh from the adults.
With this information they came up with a mad poet who founded Southport from the melted Ice caps of the South Pole.
Act 2 really ramped things up with an improvised section created using random items in audience member’s bags.
The two professors ran up and down the auditorium steps seeking a mystical object to fit their new myth, and when they happened upon a soft leopard print tail from a young girl in the front row, the story began.
This led to a comedic battle with young boys from the audience as lions fighting a half-fish and half-goat servant of the Goddess Artemis.
The final act followed the story of a hero selected from the crowd of jumping and excited children ready to be a part of the next myth.
A young boy named Hans was chosen and he ran up onto the stage, where he was fashioned with a cardboard shield, sword, and Viking helmet.
The boy conquered Surtr, God of the underworld, using a tape measure gifted from Odin, extending it and poking the fiery Titan in the eye. To which Doctor Professor said: “Do you do kitchens?”, receiving a laugh from parents.
The show ended with a rendition of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding out for a Hero”, with lines such as: “I need a hero, he’s the star of the show and we’re not going to pay him at all.”
The mad professors, played by Lee from Rubbish Shakespeare Company and Robert from the Silly History Boys, have been working together for over 15 years.
Lee and Rob have collaborated on many occasions, before making their own separate theatre companies, starting out in an adult sketch comedy called Legion of Doom (with a brand-new Best of Sketch show coming up on May 17).
Lee said: “We developed this kind of style of performing where the children in the audience become characters within the show, its fun, its interactive, you never know what they’re going to do. And audiences seemed to respond to that, so we thought why not put it on a national tour.
“Our intention was to bring new and original storytelling to families and children and foster a love for things that are new and aren’t rehashed franchises or sequels.
“The kids will enjoy the silliness, the daftness, and the falling over, where the adults get some quite unexpected jokes in there that really make them howl.”
He added: “When we get the last child up on stage for the final act, it is their story, but we always try our best to engineer it in a way that leaves a positive message for the audience to take away.”
On the mythical theme of the show, Lee said: “I’ve always liked myths and legends since I was a child…and it just seemed like an obvious choice really.
“Myths are great because you can do what you want with them; they’ve always been reinterpreted for modern audiences and it’s nice to do that with these tales. And with the show you have built-in characters to work with that the audience know and understand.”
Lee has done a lot of ‘clowning’ in London and other shows with the Rubbish Shakespeare Company over the years and said that the production lends itself more to a “clown show” as it is completely dictated by the audience.
As he put it: “It’s choose your own adventure storytelling.”
Lee said: “We want to unleash some of the artistic potentials of the young audience members who get up on stage with us because they are the heroes in the tale.
“And we’ve had some absolutely fantastic young performers who probably didn’t think that morning that they’d be getting up on stage, but they produce a brilliant performance, and it’s a joy to see every time.
“But more than anything we just want the audience to take away the fun, spontaneity, and joy of live theatre and to carry on going to these kinds of theatrical productions, so we can keep them alive.”
The Story Forge: Make Your Own Myth will be on tour across the UK until October 2025.
