Photos: The Other Richard

The star of this show is Timmy the dog, designed by Rachael Canning and superbly puppeted by Ailsa Dalling. He snuffles about, barks, cuddles up, jumps at people gives us lovely canine grins and has his own hilarious save-the-day moment. A magnificent full-size seal on the beach is good too.

We (almost?) all read Enid Blyton’s books over and over again in childhood. I certainly did. And that means you have a whole audience with a great deal of prior knowledge and expectation. So making these, in all honesty, very dated stories work for 2022 is quite a challenge. Elinor Cook’s book is an ingenious melange of several Blyton stories but it is, inevitably fraught with inconsistencies. The cousins arrive at Kirrin on a steam train complete with a wily, jack-of-all-trades station master (Sam Harrison – very good) and they wear 1950s clothes but when we get to the usually distracted, dotty but stern Uncle Quentin (David Ricardo-Pearce) there’s a big reveal.

I don’t remember ever reading exactly what Uncle Quentin’s hugely important scientific research was actually about. Cook has decided that – obviously for 2022 – it’s an algae to reverse the effects of climate change and suddenly we’re a very long way from the 1950s. Cue for a lot of fairly didactic stuff about why it matters so much. It’s a bit out of place but, even so, I was surprised to hear an audience member boo from the back on press night.

The three cousins are nicely characterised with a lot of emphasis on Anne (Isabelle Methven) refusing to be patronised or be in any way inferior to the others. Louis Suc’s Dick is a curly haired, sandwich loving, ebullient foil and Dewi Wykes brings unexpected vulnerability to Julian, the fourteen year old who can’t always be expected to know what to do.

There’s fine work from Maria Goodman as the angry, foot-stamping George. She’s usually unhappy and regards her gorgeous (initially banned by her father)  dog as her only true friend.  Her character gradually thaws and deepens and her anguished full-belt number in the second half is sung with real passion. However, the briefly mentioned back story, presumably to explain why she is mixed race but her parents are not, seems clumsily unnecessary in these enlightened days of colour-blind casting.

Led by Katherine Rockhill, there’s a good band on an upper level just visible through the gauzy backcloth of Lucy Osborne’s colourful set design. Of course they play well, as do the three additional musicians forming part of the ensemble below but the material is for the most part (Goodman’s big number, excepted) pretty unmemorable. Much of Theo Jamieson’s music it is repetitive sung conversation, thoughts and remarks bringing out words and emotions rather than being melodious. But I’m afraid this isn’t Sondheim.

The video designer, Ash J Woodward deserves round of applause all of his own. We get recipes (poor food-producing Aunt Fanny – Lara Denning – trying to keep the peace between Quentin and George) scientific formulae, flames, smoke, stars, the sea and lots more. It makes for plenty of visual interest.

The first half of this show is fairly slow with a lengthy exposition of situation and point of view.  After the interval it becomes a bit surreally silly and thus more entertaining. There’s an enjoyable count-down climax and I liked the idea of the villainess Rowena (Kibong Tanji – good) turning out to be not such a bad guy after all – like Abanazer at the end of Aladdin.

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  Photos: The Other Richard

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First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/the-famous-five-a-new-musical/