The Heart of Robin Hood

The Heart of Robin Hood finds the outlaw already famous and not remotely heroic. This Robin robs the rich, keeps everything, and has never given a penny of it away. The idea that he should comes from somebody else entirely.

Marion is a noblewoman being handed to Prince John in marriage. She runs, cuts off her hair, invents a masked bandit called Martin of Sherwood and starts giving away what Robin's gang has stolen, which is both a rescue operation for the local poor and a deliberate provocation. Two orphaned children attach themselves to her. Robin, who cannot work out who this rival is, finds himself competing for a reputation he never wanted.

David Farr wrote the play, which reached the stage in 2011 in a production directed by Gisli Orn Gardarsson. It reorders the legend so that the famous virtue is learned rather than assumed, and the woman usually waiting in a castle is the one who supplies it.

It is staged as a physical, acrobatic piece: the forest is built for climbing and falling, the set includes a wall of green that performers vanish into and slide down, and the fights are choreographed for spectacle rather than realism. There is live music, a good deal of comedy, and a body count higher than the tone leads you to expect.

The result is a family adventure with an argument inside it. The play keeps asking what generosity costs when it is not free, and it does not let its hero answer until it hurts.