There must be one thought on every parent’s mind as they shuffle themselves and whatever entourage of children they’ve brought with them into the Lyric Theatre to see ‘The Gruffalo’: please don’t mess this up.
So beloved is Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s bedtime book that it’s not just a load of grumpy kids that’ll be left sitting there should the show not live up to expectations, it’s a room full of disappointed adults whose first few years of parenthood and the memories that come with them are likely to have been shaped by this story and its inimitable rhymes.
Worry not, Gruffalo fans. This is a charming production from Tall Stories that has been running since 2001 with various tweaks and upgrades along the way, and it’s not hard to see why it’s managed to stay around so long.
The familiar stuff’s all there – the jittery mouse, the sneering fox, the aloof owl and the sly snake, kitted out in imaginative costumes that add a nice bit of wonder to the experience – but it’s been bulked out to hit a one-hour run-time. Characters are given a bit more space to develop, and each has a rip-roaring song that takes the show from bouncing ska to slick disco before ending on a chugging grunge rock number that has everyone clapping along.
If that doesn’t keep you gripped, there’s an extended section in which audience members are invited to crack out their finest gruffalo growls – hilarious for the kids, cathartic for the parents, chaos for the performers – but otherwise the show sticks close to its central narrative and avoids too many gimmicks. It is, in other words, a production that knows it’s at its strongest when it comes back to Donaldson’s familiar words, and there’s nothing wrong with that – it’s what brought us all here, after all.