Wonder is a word that is used too often in theatre, somewhat emptied of meaning by marketing’s emasculating of language. It’s used even less honestly by critics - we’ve seen too much to really feel wonder. But, for the first time since seeing the RSC’s magnificent My Neighbour Totoro, I’m here to tell you I was as wide-eyed as the Sophies sitting transfixed in my row as this lovely show unfolded before us.
The story, beautifully, and, one trusts, uncontroversially, adapted by Tom Wells, will be familiar to many (but was not to me) begins in an orphanage where Sophie and Kimberley bicker about dreams and magic. Suddenly The Big Friendly Giant himself turns up, whisks Sophie away to Giant Country where she will surely be eaten. But the BFG is true to his given name and prefers snozzcumbers to human beans - there’s a lot of mangled language in his speech, a motif that rather outstays its welcome - and he and Sophie, outsiders both, bond in adversity.
Soon they’re catching dreams, mixing them into bespoke convincers, implanting one for The Queen of England’s sleep, mobilising a very boy scoutish military, capturing the BFG’s evil cousins and saving the day for one and all. Hurrah!
But for all the pace of the adaptation and in Daniel Evans’ surefooted direction (and there’s no quality more important in kids’ theatre than pace - ask a parent), it’s not really that story that the kids (some as old as 62, believe me) will treasure. They will hold images of the giants in their mind’s eye for weeks, maybe years, just as they will the Totoro still packing them in at the Gillian Lynne Theatre.
It’s crucial to the production’s conception, too. The huge, dare I say, gigantic, puppets need to express emotion, traverse a complex psychological landscape, and be fully integrated into an at once familiar and magical world. Otherwise, the remarkable and, it has to be said, brave decision to continually switch between the humans’ scale in which Sophie is real and the BFG a puppet and the giants’ scale in which the BFG is real and Sophie is a puppet, just wouldn’t work. Both worlds must coincide from minute to minute with equal credibility - and they do.
If the puppets are the stars of the show, the poppets aren’t far behind them. Actually, that may be a decent line, but Ellemie Shivers and Maisy Lee are much more than that as Sophie and Kimberley, carrying their fair share of the emotional weight of the drama, the eyes through which we see these two coincident and colliding worlds. The third kid in the show is the BFG himself, John Leader (pictured above) playing him as an insecure teen with a heart of gold, not quite the missing parents of orphan girls, but certainly the fragile and much loved big brother.
The rest of the cast have a lot of fun veering towards, but not quite embracing, panto in a show that works as a Christmas treat, but can play all year round. As the bored and pampered queen who finds inspiration in the courage of Sophie and her amiable giant friend, Helena Lymbery dons the jodhpurs, flies the helicopter and, well, let’s say enjoys the abdominal fluctuations provoked by the BFG’s fizzy frobscottle drink. She makes a fine double act with Sargon Yelda’s uptight butler, Tibbs, given just enough backstory for us to be rooting for him too.
If Richard Riddell is stuck with a cartoonish villain in the evil giant Bloodbottler, Philip Labey and Luke Sumner go full Gilbert & Sullivan as the queen’s protection detail, milking their outrageous moustaches for laugh after laugh - you know you shouldn’t be giggling, but you just are. Roll in some well judged and well played music by Oleta Haffner, unobtrusive but crucial video by Akhila Krishnan and excellent illusions from Chris Fisher and the ticket price proves more than fully justified.
Though it’s the warp and weft of reviewing to evaluate and praise the components of a production, more than most, this one’s magic lies in its abstract strengths. Most of all, it is in its charm that it scores, lifting the mood of the most cynical of its audience, of its most reluctant parent accompanying an over-stimulated child, of its mardyist teen. It really is a delight.
BFG? Brilliant unForgettable Gorgeous!
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