The Pied Piper of Hamelin

On 17 and 18 December, the Victoria Theatre is playing host to The Pied Piper of Hamelin, staged by the shadow puppet theatre company Olveira/Salcedo. Only two puppeteers are in charge of handling a wide range of elements and props to bring the characters to life. They are Olga Olveira and Juvenal Salcedo, the founders of the theatre company. They also design and make the puppets, the lights, the sets and all the devices needed to perform the show.

The legend of the pied-piper of the town of Hamelin, in Germany, dates back to the Middle Ages. It is about a piper dressed in multicoloured (“pied”) clothing, who was a rat catcher hired by the town to lure rats away. When the citizens refuse to pay for this service as promised, he retaliates by using his instrument’s magical power on their children, leading them away as he had the rats. In this version, the children are wrongly accused of the crimes committed by the rats to highlight the cruelty in the original tale.