Thumbelina

Published Wednesday 29 November 2006 at 12:15 by Christopher Collett

Northern Stage’s Christmas offering for the under-sixs is a little gem that enthrals its young audience and even throws in a few gags for the adults.

Susan Mulholland’s adaptation is contemporary with lots of modern references yet still successfully captures the charm of the original story of Thumbelina, the tiny young girl who yearns for adventure and to grow taller. Using a sleepy storytelling swallow as a neat framing device, we follow our feisty heroine through an outsized world - realised in Andrew Stephenson’s cute and clever set design - as she is held captive by a toad and smothered by a well-meaning fieldmouse before stumbling across a similarly-sized companion. Karen Traynor is wonderful in the title role - she’s a bouncing ball of energy and her attempts to make herself grow an extra half-centimetre are hilarious. Mark Calvert shines too as both the toad’s henpecked son forced to enter an amphibian equivalent of The X Factor and as a myopic mole with marital designs on Thumbelina. Brendan Murphy as the swallow, meanwhile, makes a great narrator, his storytelling accompanied by a range of fascinating percussion instruments.

Add to this some well-orchestrated physical comedy sequences and this charming production, ably directed by Annie Rigby, fully deserves the thumbs up.