Carlo Collodi’s 1887 kids’ novel ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ is an extremely wild ride, vastly more out there than the 1940 Disney film that’s come to define the story and character (and that in itself is probably a lot darker and weirder than you remember). The wooden boy who wants to be human has about ten times more adventures than his animated counterpart, is roughly 100 times naughtier (for starters he murders the talking cricket), and there’s a whole lot of complicated allegorical stuff involving a fox and a cat.
It’s basically unadaptable in any sort of literal form, which is quite liberating for those doing the adapting. And they’re having a busy 2022, with two very different screen versions – a Disney live-action remake and Guillermo del Toro’s stop motion take set in fascist Italy – turning up on screening services in bewilderingly quick succession. And for its first big show since the summer, the Unicorn Theatre stages its own ‘Pinocchio’ as its big Christmas show.
Playwright Eve Leigh has borrowed about as much from Coloddi as Disney did – ie, quite a lot but still only really scratching the surface. And that’s a smart decision: Justin Audibert’s production for ages seven and above is different to Disney, but also relatively straightforward and easy for kids to get their heads around. It doesn’t get bogged down in the canyons of the source text, but it has some of its darkness, but balanced out by a panto-ish good cheer.
The heart of Leigh’s text is examining Peyvand Sadeghian’s naive, cheeky puppet boy’s relationship with Tom Kanji’s Gepetto, his toymaker surrogate dad. Far younger than the twinkly-eyed old man of Disney, Leigh’s version is desperate to be a dad, but then struggles with the realities of single fatherhood: Pinocchio is unruly, needy, at one point threatens to set fire to Gepetto’s bed – at its heart is a fairly realistic drama about the strains of fostering, albeit it never exactly gets kitchen sink: Pinocchio’s nose still grows when he tells a lie, and he has a talking cat friend called Marmalade (Susan Harrison).
There’s a twinkling Alpine charm to Jean Chan’s sets, Barnaby Race’s oompah-ish music and Audibert’s direction. It’s magical, but for the most part not fantastical, a relatable story of a slightly fractious father and son relationship pepped up with larky peripheral characters. Eventually, it does build to its traditional climax with Gepetto getting swallowed up by a big scary puppet fish and Pinocchio having to rescue him, but the fantasy is never laid on too thick – Leigh tells the story she wants to tell crisply and efficiently, with just the right mix of charm and bite.