Potter’s rebellious Peter Rabbit dares to seize the day
Where Is Peter Rabbit? Bowness-on-Windermere ★★★ ★★
Never mind Harry Potter and the Cursed
Child – in the Lake District this summer, they’re getting in a flap about Beatrix Potter and her world-famous rabbit.
The approaches to Bowness-on-Windermere are cluttered with road signs for Where Is Peter Rabbit?, a new “musical adventure” mounted to mark the 150th anniversary of Potter’s birth, and taking place in the theatre housed within the World of Beatrix Potter attraction, itself 25 years old.
Alas, the late Victoria Wood was to have provided lyrics for this big boost to visitor-value before cancer claimed her; Sir Alan Ayckbourn has stepped in, with celebrity cameos in the shape of audio-recordings from Griff Rhys Jones and Miriam Margoyles.
There was much to entice us then, but the 55-minute show is so gentle, even Wordsworth might have felt over-soothed.
As the title suggests, the storyline concerns a search for Peter Rabbit. With a serenely smiling Danielle Morris narrating as Potter herself, the hunt is on, with Jemima Puddle-Duck waddling over hill and dale like a bonneted super-bird.
En route, we drop in on Jeremy Fisher, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Mr Tod the Fox, who’s trying to snare Tommy Brock the badger. The theatre can take some pride in being among the first to bring even this modest bunch of Potter characters to life on stage, only the Royal Ballet’s rep staple has held sway.
I suspect, though, dance may simply be the better medium than puppetry. As is the norm these days, we see the puppets being manipulated by their close-shadowing handlers, who speak and sing as required.
Director Sheila Carter introduces some inventive flourishes, but expressiveness is on the rudimentary side – we’re not miles away from the taxidermed-like exhibits in the attraction. The beautiful original illustrations are honoured, and some of Potter’s lines are a pleasure in their own right. But the whole thing is little match for the satisfaction that lies in perusing the books. Margoyles and Jones lend innocuous warmth, as does the recorded score by Steve Edis, but I’d have preferred to see a vibrant ensemble of actor-musicians.
To his credit, Ayckbourn’s lyrics have a bland but perky enjoyability, especially in the showdown between Peter and Mr McGregor (“Let’s sing a ballad for salad!”), a man with the creepy face of a garden gnome and multiplied here by a factor of five for fearsome measure. The cutesome sight of that fluffy rabbit rebel, who dares, in a world of Victorian rectitude, parental caution and fatal threat, to carpe diem is just about worth the price of admission for the very young (three to six, I’d say) or the very nostalgic and indulgent.