Rattie, Toad and Mole go gangsta in a rap Willows
In The Willows (Oxford Playhouse and touring) Verdict: Kenneth Grahame meets Hamilton in the urban jungle ★★★★✩
HAVING read The Wind In The Willows to both my girls and seen multiple adaptations on stage and TV, I thought I knew all there was to know about the charming Edwardian tale of animals having adventures in the Wild Wood.
But if the author Kenneth Grahame got wind of this inner-city musical version he’d probably be break-dancing in his grave.
Writer and director Poppy Burton-Morgan has taken Grahame’s rustic idyll and translated it into a sung-through rap starring Clive Rowe.
The Willows of the title is a struggling inner-city comp with pupils in colour-coordinated costumes instead of fur and four legs. The riverbank has become a nightclub where there’s ‘nothing half so much worth doing as messing about with beats’. I wondered if Burton-Morgan could keep up her gangsta raid on the children’s classic for the full two hours. I would normally rather listen to a dog bark than be subjected to rap for that long. But this is a brilliantly original and delightfully funny take on the story.
My favourite rhyme was when bad boy Toad cites Stephen Hawking’s theory of time to claim ‘it’s debatable Toad is late at all’.
The sheer speed and pitch of the lyrics sometimes blur the story, but who cares? My nineyear-old daughter was on the edge of her seat just the same.
It’s no wonder Rowe agreed to star as Badger the teacher. He is the QE2 of musical theatre, but also brings street cred and his enormous vocal range is good for tender moments, too, when he exhorts Zara MacIntosh as street-smart Rattie to go to university.
Just as much fun is Harry Jardine as medallioned Toad, singing a super-fast rap. Victoria Boyce, as Mole, softens the harder edges, with one song reminding me of Ariel’s lament in Little Mermaid.
It’s probably best for children over six. No one was more surprised than me to find this rap reworking so irresistible.