“Poop, poop”, as Toad so aptly puts it. Rachel Kavanaugh’s production of The Wind in the Willows is sometimes cute, sometimes raucous but mostly flaccid. Julian Fellowes’s adaptation strings together a series of episodes. Animals prance in striped leggings, claw the air and twitch. Peter McKintosh’s design is a fluorescent blare. Anthony Drewe’s lyrics – “Spring… season of hope… birds start to sing” – are limp. Still, George Stiles’s music – a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan, a bit of Flanders and Swann – is often cleverly catchy. There is some charm from the wassailing mice. And weasels, stoats and foxes, banding together as the Wildwooders, do glam rock very ably. They make you long for their version of this staid story. The blast in the forest.
Keep your claws crossed that what happened to me at a schools’ matinee happens to you. About 20 minutes from the end, the computer conked out. The show stopped – and theatricality roared on to the stage. Rufus Hound, an untiring, leaping Mr Toad in emerald moustache and wig, managed to whip a throng of stripy-blazers into yelling and singing life, getting them to learn a song in seconds. “You are now,” Hound pointed out, “part of the show.” After the dilatory messing about in boats (how slowly Ratty’s little dinghy circled) he gloriously showed how to rescue a sinking ship. And proved that high technology is not the best way to render a nature story.
