Director Sarah Argent has not so much adapted Peter Harris and Deborah Allwright’s children’s picture book for the stage, as brought it to life. Bek Palmer’s design is all about finding a way to recreate Allwright’s dynamic style of illustration. Her solution is to make the transition of one scene to the next a part of the story - mimicking the book’s equally dynamic use of lettering.
Other companies specialising in children’s book adaptations would have given the characters additional material and big introductions - most notably Stephen Cavanagh’s Moon, who steps out of his high crib to narrate. Here, however, Cavanagh uses no more than the existing lines and his own sympathetic performance to drive the plot.
The key is a strong multidisciplinary approach. Cavanagh’s storytelling is complimented by puppetry from Samuel Dutton, who manipulates a knee-high Tom, the boy who wakes up to find that girl pirates have stolen the front of his house, and a tiny but gallus grown-up pirate, whose treasure is stolen by Tom and the girl pirates.
It is dancer Momo Yeung, as the Captain of the Girl Pirates, who ensures that the magic feels real, as she moves around the stage en pointe and then casually adds the odd grand jete into the mix. With the acrobatic Maisie Whitehead, they create both girl and grown-up pirates with ease.
Atmospheric music from Wayne Walker-Allen is vital, alghouth Nick Kent’s lighting is occasionally wayward. But it is that dressing and re-dressing of the set which really catches the imagination of the under-five audience, allowing them to feast upon the play as they would a picture.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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