Neil Duffield's play began life as a series of Oxfam Christmas cards featuring scenes from traditional Russian fairy tales. Unable to decide which appealed to him most, Duffield cobbled elements of all of them together into a composite adventure full of Slavic princes, wolves and witches walking in a winter tundra land.
Duffield's inclusiveness is the piece's greatest strength, but also its principal weakness. The narrative opens out like a sequence of Russian dolls, so that promising situations suddenly break down to reveal another chunk of plot-development inside. No sooner are we introduced to the baddie, than he is discarded in favour of another baddie, and so on. It means there is never a dull moment - but never a particularly well-developed one, either.
Sue Reddish's energetic production has a bit of an identity crisis. On the one hand it has the chill beauty of an exotic piece of folklore, on the other it seems rather too eager to please. It is debatable whether the veracity of the illusion is well served by the sudden inclusion of a panto-style sing-along. The most successful children's shows I have seen this season are, paradoxically, those that have made no concession to the age of the audience at all.
Dominic Hooper's designs are impressive; particularly resourceful is the Heath Robinson-ish witch's lair, in which Baba Yaga, the flesh-eating crone of Russian children's nightmares, sits enthroned on a pair of gigantic chicken legs.
The cast work hard, yet are committed to that overemphatic mode of acting deemed suitable for children - and this runs the risk of underestimating what young audiences can absorb. The treacherous, last-minute poisoning of the prince and princess, for example, seems less a matter of life or death than a couple of actors lying on the ground until it is time to get up again.
As a seasonal entertainment for the under-eights, The Firebird is adequate on every level. But as a piece of total theatre, it is not particularly hot to the touch.
· Until January 18. Box office: 01204 520661.
