"Christmas ought to be brought up to date," cries the rebellious Maria, a sort of Beryl the Peril with firearms in Piers Torday's play based on John Masefield’s 1935 novel.
And indeed, long before Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or the flying Ford Anglia dreamed up by J K Rowling, Masefield had obliged with his car-o-plane in which the bad guys whisk away their kidnapped victims.
But if it is an aspect of modernity that makes, one might almost say saves, this production, it is the video designs by Nina Dunn and Matthew Brown, whose projections provide most of the enchantment, transforming scenes in a twinkling, and at one point cleverly superimposing onto the set a 3D fantasy of a fairy-tale town.
Kay, played appealingly and with wide-eyed wonder by Callum Balmforth, is given charge by Stephen Boxer’s good magician of a magic box, sought by his nemesis Abner, a ruthless Richard Lynch. For some reason, probably better understood by the five-year-olds in the audience than by me, Kay must save the box in order to save Christmas.
He has to escape Abner and his wolves, and the show’s most spectacular scene change comes when Janet Etuk as Herne the Hunter transports the fleeing Kay and his chums into a forest idyll.
Masefield was Poet Laureate at the time of writing, and his affectionate word-spinning illuminates the piece in a way reminiscent of Roald Dahl—kidnapped victims are ‘scrobbled’ or suffer ‘the fantods’. But for all its futuristic claims, it sounds distinctly of his time and class, where, oh crikey, one might get jolly well biffed.
The cast do a creditable job with the material, including Mae Mundo as Maria and Jack Humphrey as her public school twit of a brother, with Timothy Speyer and Melody Brown making a delightful, indomitably cheerful duo as Bishop and Mayor.
There were a few minor glitches elsewhere in the performance I saw, and with no attempt to disguise the technicians operating the stage wizardry. The introduction of a mini-me puppet for a shrunken Kay was awkward and its handling peremptory at best.
Despite some fine qualities, the show lacks magic, especially in a rather dull first half—and with too little music or humour for that matter—to make this a family Christmas classic.