Starry retelling of Beatrix Potter fails to conjure up much magic
Where is Peter Rabbit? Theatre Royal Haymarket
If you are still in shock from Hollywood’s recent makeover of poor old Peter Rabbit, which saw Beatrix Potter’s timid mischief maker transformed into a cocky, house-trashing yob with a penchant for sticking carrots up unsuspecting bottoms, then at least Roger Glossop’s musical adaptation, featuring lyrics by Alan Ayckbourn, feels precision engineered to provide an antidote.
No wanton animal hooliganism, unfunny butt references and relentlessly unlovely CGI here. Rather, hand-painted hollyhocks, delightful animal puppets and use of Potter’s original text ensure that her bucolic vision of an English countryside filled with munching bunnies and gullible ducks is lovingly reaffirmed, right down to Mrs Tiggy-winkle’s starched linens blowing in the breeze.
So why is this show so lacking in magic and enchantment?
Glossop, who has strung together five stories in ways that aim to replicate the experience of having them read aloud (Miriam Margolyes and Griff Rhys Jones provide prerecorded voice-overs) strains every sinew to stay faithful to Potter’s olde worlde charm but, alas, the result feels lifeless and garbled.
As Jeremy Fisher loses his galoshes, Lucie looks for her pocket handkin and Jemima Puddleduck almost gets eaten by a fox, it becomes apparent that director Sheila Carter has given precious little thought to how to give these 100-year-old tales new life on stage. Moments of high tension – the bunnies in the oven! – are squandered. Some stories are peculiarly confusing. The puppets are fantastic but I wish the actor puppeteers had invested their animal characters with a mite more personality. Meanwhile Potter herself, played by Joanna Brown, provides a clumsy narrative framing device that involves her spending much of the show wondering where Peter is, which is a problem because so do the audience; he eventually appears in the final story, eating one of Mr Mcgregor’s cabbages.
This show began life at the Old Laundry Theatre in the Lake District, which may explain why it feels so lost here in the West End. Poor acoustics don’t help the production much – Margolyes and Rhys Jones are at times inaudible, as are Ayckbourn’s lyrics, set to Steven Edis’s pleasant if a tad insipid songs.
Potter’s stories are nostalgia incarnate, but despite today’s thriving merchandise industry, in truth they remain a tough nut to crack for 21st-century audiences.
I admire the determination to honour Potter’s gentle imagination so immaculately, but I’ve rarely seen an audience of young children this restless, and at times, even bored.