I’m all for children’s theatre that celebrates the power of the imagination. But I’m not sure Peaceful Lion’s take on Rosie’s Magic Horse is that good at practising what it preaches. My daughter, Cora, and I are both fond of the book by Russell Hoban, with illustrations by Quentin Blake. It’s about a girl who collects lolly sticks, which conjoin one night while Rosie sleeps and turn into a magic horse. The horse, Stickerino, leads Rosie on an adventure, first to a lollipop mountain, then to a pirate camp, from which Rosie makes off with the treasure that will help her cash-strapped parents pay the bills.
To be fair, Cora, who has just turned five, was perfectly satisfied with this live version of the tale – which is the important thing. But it seemed rather uninspired to me. Obviously, it’s made on a shoestring – which wouldn’t matter, were the imagination engaged. But the cheap visuals aren’t transcended; unlike the titular horse, the show just doesn’t take flight.
In the production’s defence, I should say that we saw it at a difficult performance, with only a handful of people in the audience. The cast plugged away gamely, but the room felt empty, and warmth – far less wonder – proved tricky to generate. But even taking that into account, it felt like by-numbers stuff. Perhaps it’s inevitable that the quite oblique charms of the book, in which a lot is unsaid and unexplained, would suffer by transition to the stage. Here, there’s lots of talking, much of it by characters who don’t feature at all in the original, including an ice-cream man, two Incas and (Cora’s favourite) Ali Baba.
We hear plenty from them, effortfully blethering away with the type of plotty information the book avoids. But the challenge of animating and characterising the lolly sticks in Rosie’s box – the ones who turn into Stickerino – is largely shirked. The horse himself is lame, too. The knacker’s yard beckons for this more or less lifeless cardboard box cum usherette’s tray, who speaks in pre-recorded voiceover. It’s never really a character; it’s a prop.
There’s not much by way of seductive stagecraft, or anything that approaches the simple magic of the original, in which Stickerino and Rosie soar through the sky over cities and jungles; and in which the horse can turn himself into an ice-cream van, or a swarm of belligerent lolly sticks, at will. All of this happens here, of course, but usually we’re told it’s happening rather than shown it – far less shown it inventively or in ways that might thrum the heart-strings.
There are lively flashes, like the pirate rap that Rosie’s oo-aaar adversaries sing in the third section of her adventure. That’s good fun. At one or two moments, the kids in the audience are invited to get involved – which they were reluctant to do at the sparsely attended gig we saw. An amendment to the original casts Rosie’s dad as a creator of children’s books, whose writer’s block is decongested at the end by his daughter’s supposedly amazing story. He phones his publisher; suddenly, the family’s money problems are solved and we’ve got our happy ending.
Perhaps I’d have felt happy too, in a livelier crowd. But, on the basis of the so-so 45 minutes I saw, I’m afraid I found it hard to see what Rosie’s dad, or his publisher, gets excited about.
- Rosie’s Magic Horse is at The Lights, Andover, on 19 September, Arts Depot in Finchley on 20 September and on tour around the UK until 14 November.
