It’s good to see the Liverpool Everyman including a family show in its first season with its new repertory company, and better still that it is inspired by local poet Brian Patten’s children’s book about an ancient giant who collects stories like falling stars. His great library holds every story ever told except one, which has remained stubbornly elusive. Unless he can find it by dawn, all will be lost. Can four children from around the world, working together through their night-time dreams, come to his aid?
Some of the poetic swagger of Patten’s original is retained in Lindsay Rodden’s adaptation, but it’s a shame that a show so inspired by the transformative power of make-believe fails to find a corresponding fluid theatrical style of storytelling. Matt Rutter’s production perks up in the second half when the stories are more acted out. But while the way the tales punctuate the action feels organic on the page, on stage it leads to a stop-start jerkiness and a lack of urgency about the quest.
There are rather too many earnest messages about how stories help us live (and die). And although the design, with its magical tree in the centre of the playing space, is atmospheric, it means that too much of the action happens with actors facing away from the audience, with consequent sound issues. The show does eventually pull on the heartstrings – at least adult ones – and everyone rightly warms to Tom Kanji’s delightfully comic Hassan. But it’s a sturdy endeavour, not a magically inspired one.
•At Everyman theatre, Liverpool, until 29 April. Box office: 0151-709 4776.
