songs | interviews | photos | tours | boots | press releases | timeline

Vogue (UK)
October 2013

THEATRE
SEE THE LIGHT

Tori Amos's magical debut opens this month

"She's a smart, grieving, truculent, defensive, adventurous, contradictory and ultimately loving teenager who has to take on evils in her world." So says Tori Amos of her latest musical creation, The Light Princess. Based on a lesser-known Victorian Scottish fairy tale by George MacDonald about a royal heiress cursed to live without gravity, Amos's first excursion into musical theatre opens at the National Theatre this month, and promises to be as ethereal and quixotic as its flame-haired composer (who wrote the vocal arrangements under the musical supervision of Martin Lowe). "We wanted to create a musical fairy tale that spoke directly to modern concerns," Amos continues. "We steeped ourselves in fairy tales that had vivid female protagonists -- women put in predicaments by their societies, women who take on the challenges of entering the woods." As for negotiating the princess's lack of gravitational pull: "We weren't interested in lightness being a mere curse," explains Amos, "more that it was the princess's response to trauma, a complex emotional and psychological state that she and the people around her must understand in order to overcome. MacDonald's central idea remains, but we've made it our own." JE

"The Light Princess" opens on October 9; Nationaltheatre.org.uk


photo by Jason Bell

t o r i p h o r i a
tori amos digital archive
yessaid.com