Demonstrating yet again why the Watermill has a huge reputation despite its tiny size, this reworking of Hans Christian Andersen's story is a little thing of real beauty. Andersen's story, inspired by the singer Jenny Lind, tells of the Chinese emperor who imprisons the songbird in a cage. Although Neil Duffield includes that aspect in his excellent version, he broadens its scope to create an adventure story that speaks eloquently of the prisons we create for ourselves.
The young emperor here is a captive inside his own palace in the Forbidden City as a result of the machinations of his advisor, Li Si, who wants all the power for himself. But the emperor is also a prisoner of his own ignorance and fear of the world beyond his home. It takes Xiao, the daughter of a hermit living on the mountainside (the natural habitat of the nightingale), to show him that there is a world outside his palace. It then takes a lowly peasant woman to tell him a few home truths about what the people really think of an emperor who demands half their harvest and leaves them hungry.
All this is well and good and suitably improving, but in Fiona Laird's production it is done with such charm and elegance that the whole thing seems somehow much more than it is, and has the rare quality of being as entertaining for an adult as it is for a small child. In part, that's because it looks so good: Philip Witcomb provides a red, gold and green pagoda, and there is a jewel-like richness about almost every aspect of the design. A terrific cast play and sing to perfection, and Laird finds a clever and entirely appropriate way to animate the nightingale itself. A little treasure box of a show.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 01635 46044.
