★★★★☆
“I don’t want any silly people on this expedition,” snaps the Banker, the pinstriped, money-minded leader of the quest to capture the elusive Snark. Well, bad luck, Banker — because silliness abounds in this fizzily joyous family mini-musical.
That delight in the daft doesn’t mean that the show isn’t also super-smart. Annabel Wigoder’s 70-minute stage version of the Lewis Carroll nonsense poem is a daffy yarn with dash, hilarity and a sweet heart. Gareth Cooper’s jaunty songs have flavours of folk and jazz, and nimble lyrics that zing with wit, while Gemma Colclough’s irresistible production would charm even the most frumious Bandersnatch.
Wigoder adds to Carroll’s motley crew of adventurers a Boy (the winningly fresh-faced Jordan Leigh-Harris), the neglected son of Simon Turner’s grasping Banker. Family troubles are alluded to with the lightest of touches; after a number in which his blinkered father extols his love of cash and the power it brings, the Boy plaintively inquires: “Can it bring Mum back?” And the Snark hunt is as much about the emotional reconnection of father and son as it is the fabulous beast.
Above all, this is gleeful fun, performed with fleet-footed precision and vivacity on Justin Nardella’s pretty design of glowing lanterns, ship’s sails and blossom-laden branches. Ben Galpin is debonair as the Bellman, an expert explorer (Indiana Jones with a touch of Bear Grylls), and delicious as a rainbow-tasselled Jubjub bird.
Will Bryant has anarchic energy as the amnesiac Baker and the preening, thieving Bandersnatch in purple shiny tights and glittering ruffles. And Polly Smith’s bloodthirsty Butcher is nastily comical and Sweeney Todd-scary. Even the puppet Beaver — the Bellman’s rodent sidekick with a talent for knitting — is marvellously expressive, with its buck-toothed features and busy paws click-clacking away with needles and wool.
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The search for the Snark may be a fool’s errand, but when the company is as loveable as this, only a spoilsport wouldn’t jump aboard.
Box office: 0330 333 4814, to September 2