What makes a Christmas show a cracker? Imagination? It’s here in a scrumdiddlyumptious plenitude. The world of Roald Dahl’s giant-filled story (as adapted by David Wood) is presented via a panoply of perspective-shifting ploys. Bonecruncher, Fleshlumpeater and Bloodbottler are sometimes shadows projected on to a screen, sometimes part-puppet, part-human: each has one giant foot, one giant arm, a huge head and a HUGE mouth.
Richard Booth, Philip Bosworth and Roddy Peters provide the appropriate mix of scary ferocity and reassuring stupidity, especially when guzzling foot-high, doll-like Nordic people and loving their “Sweden sour taste”. The Big Friendly Giant himself is 6ft 2in-tall John Seaward, gobblefunking words, disliking rotsome snozzcumbers and gleefully delivering curtain-billowing whizzpops, to the horror of young human bean, Sophie - played by young adult, Macy Nyman, who also manipulates the puppet Sophie when she is carried off to the land of the giants.
Just as imaginative as Michael Fowkes’s puppet design and direction is Janet Bird’s surprise-filled set. Bottles beam bright colours as drab cupboard doors swing open; brick walls rotate to reveal children lying abed, as if seen from the ceiling. Props perform improbabilities - at Buckingham Palace (a luxury of clever cardboard cutouts) the Queen’s union jack bedspread, hoist on high, transforms into a lit chandelier. Sarah Esdaile’s direction cannily weaves this complexity into focused performance. On the presentation level, it’s truly gloriumptious. And yet...
What really makes a Christmas show a cracker? For me, it’s the rapport between stage and auditorium - and this is something that here we have too little of. Rapport doesn’t have to be direct address (though it can be - oh yes, it can!); it can be subtle - as in Sarah Finigan’s “Majester“ waving to her subjects in the direction of the auditorium. Without it, the show feels like a wonderfully decorated Christmas tree - with lights tantalisingly left unlit.
