The Snowman
Ironically for a show set largely in the frozen north pole, the dancers on stage in The Snowman, the children’s ballet, are probably hotter than they’ve ever been. James Leece, who plays the Snowman, says dancing in his giant fluffy suit is like extreme army training. He wears a T-shirt under it and wrings the sweat out of it in the interval. Water bottles, with a straw, are secreted around the wings so he can have a sip when he’s not on stage – he gets through about a litre and a half during a performance, and sometimes he performs three times a day.
Leece wears an all-in-one suit with a zip up the front and a hood; he wears a separate mask attached by poppers around the face. “The only place that your body can vent out is through the little eye and mouth-holes. Peripheral vision is pretty impaired so you really have to know the stage and space. I have to drive a motorbike on stage as well. I did crash the bike into the wings one year. I couldn’t quite see and I smashed the sidecar into one of the trees. That was a bit embarrassing.”
This is his fourth time in the role and despite the endurance aspect, he says he loves it. “It’s a pleasure to perform the show for children. They’re really engaged in the story. It does captivate them. It’s a lovely story and something all generations get. I watched it as a boy, and now my children watch it, too.”
• At the Peacock theatre, London, until 3 January. Box office: 020-7863 8222.
The BFG
“It was weird at first, doing all my scenes to a puppet,” says John Seaward, who plays the BFG in the stage adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book. “But Macy Nyman [who plays Sophie, the young girl who befriends the Big Friendly Giant] is so good at it, and makes the puppet seem so alive, it’s got easier and easier. The puppet becomes like another member of the cast.”
Having that perspective – the small puppet Sophie, and the comparatively large BFG – works brilliantly. “She crawls on to my shoulder, and I can throw her up in the air and catch her,” says Seaward. Playing the BFG is huge fun, he says. “Like the character in the book, he changes all the time – one minute he will be really sad, another minute he will be happy. He’s like a toddler in that way. He’s playful and silly and, of course, he’s very friendly.”
Michael Fowkes, the puppet director, and his workshop assistants made the puppets and masks for the show, including three other giants (the unfriendly ones), helicopters and biplanes. “Then we have puppets playing a lot of Swedish people who end up getting eaten,” he says.
They opened last week and he says children are loving it. “They love the whizpopping scene the most. The farting one.” He laughs. (BFG readers will remember the flatulence caused by the frobscottle fizzy drink.) “Which I have a soft spot for as well – who doesn’t like a good fart scene?”
• At the Octagon theatre, Bolton, until 9 January. Box office: 01204 520 661.
The Lorax
Finn Caldwell, the puppetry director, says he tries not to be too sentimental about his puppets. But he failed with the Lorax. “He has exceeded my expectations – he’s grumpy, crotchety, cute, lovable, funny. He can sing, dance, hold his own with the human actors and interact with the other puppet performers on stage. I’m a bit in love with him, I’ve got to say, and I don’t normally say that.”
The play is an adaptation of the Dr Seuss book about the bad-tempered, incongruously adorable creature and his fight to save the trees. “We tried to make him as faithful to the book as possible,” says Caldwell.
That said, bringing a line drawing to life was tricky. “We had to pretend we were Dr Seuss and imagine that he’d seen the Lorax for real, and had drawn it in his book.”
As a character, says Caldwell, the Lorax is like a bad-tempered old man, but he also has “a childlike quality – he can get very excited, very sad, then very cross, then calm all in the space of a minute or two, just like a child can. He’s also an animal as well. There were times when we were learning how to operate him where we embodied any one of those three qualities – either a crotchety old man; magical and sprightly when he leaps across the stage, or ferocious, like an angry hamster.”
• At the Old Vic theatre, London, until 16 January. Box office: 0844 871 7628.
The Cheshire Cat
Perhaps the whole point of going to the theatre is the live aspect; to watch the performers in person. This was the challenge that confronted the creators of the Cheshire Cat – a huge, digital, 3D rendering on a vast screen – for wonder.land, this modern, musical reworking of Alice in Wonderland.
“There was a concern that it wouldn’t be big enough or dynamic enough to work [in a live environment], but it does,” says Lysander Ashton, creative director of 59 Productions, who led the project to create the cat. “Which is a relief,” he adds with a laugh. His shapeshifting Cheshire Cat, who sings a four-minute musical number, has, at one point, glowing whiskers, malevolent eyes and a chilling grin.
Ashton says they looked at a huge number of references, from every version of Alice in Wonderland to images of felines in religious art, and cats in video games. “We didn’t want him to be too safe. We wanted him to be a little bit dangerous.” They were also inspired by real cats, of course. “Cats have that mercurial quality – you never quite know what they’re thinking, that feeling that they could turn on you at any moment.”
• At the National Theatre, London, until April 30. Box office: 020-7452 3000.
Baddies: The Musical
If you were going to imagine what a wolf might look like in human form, Dean Nolan, who plays the Big Bad Wolf in Baddies: The Musical, might be pretty close. “I suppose, luckily, I do have my own fangs, as well as having a massive beard and being a big fella,” he says. “We’ve gone with tattoos and a biker look.” There are no obvious accoutrements, like ears. “Hopefully his wolfishness comes across in the performance.”
In the show, the Council of Bedtime Stories has ordered the arrests of all fairytale baddies, including Captain Hook, the Ugly Sisters and Rumpelstiltskin, deciding they are a bad influence and need to be rebranded. The story ponders why they’re so bad – and whether the goody-goody characters, such as Cinderella and Peter Pan, are so virtuous after all.
“The Big Bad Wolf is one of the only characters that appears in a few different stories – the obvious one of Little Red Riding Hood, but the Three Little Pigs as well. He claims he’s a bit more important than other [villains],” says Nolan. “But he’s got a real heart and he plays his part really well – he does his day job.”
• At the Unicorn theatre, London, until 24 December. Box office: 020-7645 0560.
The Ballad of Rudy
This reindeer does not have a red nose. And he’s known by the cooler name, Rudy, as befits his guitar-playing, beatboxing persona. “What makes him different from all the other reindeer is his love of music and playing live music,” says Peter Mooney, who plays him. “He goes on this adventure through the north pole, getting taught about jazz and different types of music, and he’s just delighted at every discovery. It’s really great to play a character who has that much enthusiasm and life.”
The two other cast members take on the other characters – a penguin who plays jazz, a scat-singing fox, a bluesman polar bear and an experimental jazz puffin. Rudy plays the guitar mostly, but also the trumpet, drums and piano. “The thing that really gets the kids going is seeing the actors playing music live on stage.”
What is his favourite line? He thinks Rudy’s entrance sums up the character. “He runs into reindeer class and he says: ‘Sorry I’m late, I got up late and I missed breakfast because making toast is really hard with hooves.’ He’s manic from the beginning. It’s a good way to set the tone for what you’re in for for the next 50 minutes.”
• At the Royal Exchange theatre, Manchester, until 3 January. Box office: 0161 833 9833.
