Image courtesy of Roo theatre Company

If you’re planning on seeing Roo Theatre Company’s Two Weeks with the Queen, be sure to take with you two things: a sense of humour and a box of tissues.

Based on Morris Gleitzman’s 1990 children’s novel, Two Weeks with the Queen is told through the innocent eyes of 12-year-old Colin Mudford.

On a hot Australian Christmas Day, budding young scientist, Colin is upset about getting shoes instead of a microscope for Christmas, when his younger brother is rushed to hospital and later diagnosed with cancer.  Colin is sent to England to stay with his Aunt and Uncle and cousin Alistair, with whom he devises a plan to break into Buckingham Palace to convince the Queen to send her best doctor to Australia to help his brother Luke.  He later meets and befriends Ted, the only adult who isn’t afraid to say the word cancer.  With the help of colourful cousin Alistair and kind, Welshman Ted, Colin realises that the best doctors won’t help to cure Luke, but that having family around will make it a little easier.

Directed by Daniel Stefanovski, Two Weeks with the Queen is an uplifting story that deals with childhood cancer, HIV/AIDS, terminal illness and homosexuality.  However, the humour and childhood innocence helps to distract from these heavy issues, making a nice story that the whole family can appreciate.

Aaron Arvella as Colin is excellent.  His boyish energy and youthful curiosity make Colin an entertaining, likeable and relatable character.  Arvella’s strong performance leads the play and at times makes up for the poor acting by some of those in lesser roles.

Juran Jones is hilarious as the easily persuaded, overweight Alistair, who provides much of the comic relief.  His facial expressions and fidgeting were spot on and had the audience in stitches before he even opened his mouth. An unlikely ally to Colin, the strange character of Alistair was a definite highlight of the performance.

Other fine performances by Mahlah Hoffman as Aunty Iris, James Poole who played Ted and David Rienitis as Uncle Bob and Griff.

The performance as a whole was greatly let down by the multiple scene changes, which took up a great deal of time.  At times, the scene change took longer than the act, which interrupted the flow of the story.  This could have been overlooked had the sets been more impressive – it was obvious they were made during a working bee in somebody’s backyard.  Admittedly, the story is set in multiple places, however, this could have been overcome by one simple set, rather than attempt to cheaply recreate every scene.

Overall the performance was enjoyable and entertaining.  For an amateur theatre group, they managed to successfully portray the themes of love, loss and hope in this classic Australian story.