The Stage

Red Riding Hood

Published Monday 12 December 2011 at 11:49 by Pat Ashworth

Red Riding Hood is a beastly story because we all know what happens to Grandma. But Mike Kenny’s adaptation for small children has such a teasing quality that they know nothing really bad can happen and that the wolf is sure to get his comeuppance.

Nicola Blake and Samuel Wells in Red Riding Hood at the Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham Photo: Robert Day

There’s no wolf at all, just a sister and brother having a sleepover in whiskery Grandma’s attic and tormenting each other as siblings do. It’s a beautifully slow and measured start, eliciting the kind of infectious giggles in the dark that you only get with a very young audience. The two (Nicola Blake and Samuel Wells) enact the fairy tale in an inventive and childlike way, using little more than the clothes from Grandma’s wardrobe and some ancient tennis rackets.

Yet it’s magic too. Wardrobe and walls that appeared solid turn out to be gauze, to create an enchanted and shadowy forest. Snow falls at the end. The boyish Wells turns himself into a Welsh woodcutter and a querulous Grandma with a flavour of Alan Bennett about her. Blake sings Julian Butler’s syncopated music without any artifice, in a clear and comic telling of the story that the children will remember all their lives.