IT’S BACK, THROUGH THE NURSERY WINDOW, STILL FLYING
Just to reassure you: this offshoot from Mischief, the team who brought you the perennial Play-goes-wrong, is still a lot of fun. A fine choice for the Christmas outing for cheerful adults and perhaps especially for maturing children who are just starting to turn their noses up at panto.
I saw it first at the Pleasance in 2013, then the touring version a year later – saying this about Adam Megiddo’s finely paced direction:
Dropping in on the Richmond premiere because a friend was visiting who knows nothing of this team, I found – with Simon Scullion’s wickedly entertaining, multi-revolving seesawing set – that it is leader, even more inventive than ever.
Authors Jonathan Sayer and Henries Shields and Lewis made a wise decision in sticking close to JM Barrie’s original text with its fey sincerity and faery whimsy, rather than attempting an ordinary panto. Indeed a good running joke is that the “Director” who plays Hook is enraged whenever the audience, on nicely subtle prompts, shouts BEHIND YOU or O NO IT ISN’T. “It’s a traditional Christmas vignette! It’s not a panto” – “Oh yes it is!”
. The audition tapes played in error through the sound system at the most embarrassing moments are as fine as ever, and indeed the running joke about poor electrical connections is framed while the audience is sitting down by making them unreel cables to unfeasible edges of the auditorium.
So there is still very skilled slapstick, terrifyingly haphazard upside-down flying, oddly gentle irony, satire on the trade of acting, and a few jokes and moments milked just too long to sow a tiny discomfort.
And the touring cast? Splendid. Especially Jamie Birkett, strangely queenlike through all the chaos, and Theo Toksvig-Stewart as the hapless Max, bringing him out properly pathetic to many an “awwwww!” from the stalls. So be reassured, the show hasn’t got tired ten years on.
Touring to 14 apr with a west end session in the Lyric in November
TOUR MOUSE – but is as good as ever
theatreCat 